


as sun seeks day

by gandrshot



Series: as sun seeks day [2]
Category: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Martin Lives AU, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Really Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Presumed Dead, Skyrim Main Quest, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, Trauma, With A Twist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22369522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gandrshot/pseuds/gandrshot
Summary: The dragon awaits, but its call takes the martyr further than he could have prepared to go.
Relationships: Female Dovahkiin | Dragonborn & Martin Septim, Male Hero of Kvatch | Champion of Cyrodiil/Martin Septim
Series: as sun seeks day [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610296
Comments: 20
Kudos: 87





	1. the dragon awaits (prologue.)

**Author's Note:**

> **UPDATE (8/6/2020):** for those new to the story, first of all thank you v much for reading. i'm currently on a fairly informal break from my current publishing schedule, which is normally a chapter or one-shot every wednesday except for the last wednesday of the month. i just need a bit of time to get caught up after hitting a bit of a snag, but i can't speak to how long that'll take.
> 
> i post incessantly on [my tesblr](https://thiievesguild.tumblr.com/) about this fic and my ocs alongside all my general tes posting, and have [a twitter](https://twitter.com/assd_updates) exclusively for updates on what the hell is happening with my publishing schedule on this fic, if you're interested in that kind of thing.
> 
> tags will be added as necessary as i've decided not to tag this _too_ much with anything that's not already in it.

Flames licked against the doorway of the Temple of the One as it slammed shut just in the knick of time, Mehrunes Dagon's volley of fireballs only just dodging the harrowed knight on the other side as he heaved his weight against it. Martin watched Emrys lean against the wooden door for a long moment as he collected himself, lungs heaving, mouthing silent prayers - probably begging the Nine for it to stay shut as long as they could possibly will it.

"Well? We're here, your majesty, how exactly do you think you can fix all this?" Ocato gestured at the empty interior of the temple, the only thing of any note the brazier framed by ornate columns in the middle; and, as he'd indicated very plainly earlier, Martin knew full well that wasn't going to be of any use to them anymore. Not in the way it was intended.

Emrys looked to him from across the temple, mouth set in a firm frown and eyes pleading - desperate for any scrap of hope he could give him. As Martin's chest tightened, he almost lost the nerve to break the news to him and rip that hope away. He sucked in a deep breath anyway, steeling himself.

"I know now," Martin began tentatively, "what I was born to do. The Dragonfires won't do anything to hold the palisades between our realm and Oblivion if they've already been destroyed. But... perhaps by Akatosh's might we could resurrect them."

"Martin." Emrys took a step forward, voice wary and slow. The cogs were turning in his head and it was very plain on his face that he didn't like where this was headed one bit. "What are you going to do?"

"I can't say for sure what will happen. But... I've been dreaming of this moment for years - as my father used to, I suppose. If I use the Amulet of Kings to call forth Akatosh's power..."

"You could _die,_ " Emrys finished, closing the distance between them now. His hands closed around Martin's wrists, pulling his hands away from the Amulet that hung heavy around his neck, like if he could hold them in place that would be enough to stop him. "Or it could fail entirely. Or _both._ I can't- Martin, I can't _lose_ you. Not like that. Not _ever._ But I sure as hell can't do this alone."

"And if I do nothing at all, we'll all die regardless," Martin replied firmly, brow set. "This is the end of the line, Emrys. We've exhausted all possible options - this is the last thing I have left to try."

"Your majesty, surely there's another way..." Ocato approached slowly, wringing his hands nervously.

Outside the temple the city around them burned, screams of civilians and battle-cries of Dremora muffled but undeniable through the temple's stone walls. And for as much as Martin wanted to offer them hope, they were well out of time to find any alternatives. Smiling sadly, he pulled his wrists from Emrys' grip, only to take his hands gently in his own.

"If there was anything I could do that meant I could spend the rest of your days with you, my love, you know that I would. There's no other way."

The way the knight's eyes welled up almost made Martin want to go back on it all. He knew his resolve would waver in the face of Emrys' grief - he'd even considered just smashing the Amulet without revealing his plan, just to keep from giving himself the chance to think twice about it, but... he owed this to him, he decided. No matter how hard it made it, Martin owed it to him to give him the honest truth before they were forced to part ways. For good, perhaps.

Emrys wiped haphazardly with a gloved hand at the tears, willing himself not to break down. "Then marry me."

"I-" Martin blinked, stunned, eyes flicking around the temple. It might have been the venue they married in had everything gone according to plan, in retrospect, but in the middle of a Daedric invasion was hardly the time for an Imperial wedding. "Now?"

"You already asked me," he insisted, voice breaking. "If I have to risk losing you then just give me this. _Please._ " His head snapped to Ocato, the chancellor watching them nervously as the battle raged outside. "I- I know you're hardly a priest of Mara, but can you officiate it? Even if just this once?"

"In the middle of _all this?!_ " Ocato was incredulous - not that either of them could blame him. It was a lofty request, given their shortness on time. But Emrys was right. They weren't getting another chance at this.

" _Please,_ " Martin implored. "I know we haven't got much time, but given the desperate situation..."

The chancellor hesitated for a long moment, floundering, but much to Martin's relief he gave long sigh, shoulders sagging in resignation. "It's hardly _proper,_ but given the circumstances..." Ocato shook his head. "I doubt Mara will mind. Your plan had better work, your majesty."

Martin turned to Emrys as Ocato took his place beside him, giving his hands a small squeeze.

"I don't know the correct words for the ritual, you know," Ocato warned, wringing his hands nervously. "And all things considered I'm not sure I can convince anyone to accept it as _legally_ binding either-"

Martin raised a hand. "It's alright, friend. As long as it's accepted in the eyes of Mara I'm content. And it's like you said - given the circumstances..."

Ocato nodded. "I'll, um- I'll do my best to remember the correct phrasing."

He cleared his throat, trying to ease his nerves and drown out the sounds outside the temple. "We are gathered here in this dark hour under Mara's loving gaze, asking that she bear witness to the union of these two souls in this dire moment and grant them eternal companionship. May they journey forth together in this life and the next, no matter what happens here today. Do the two of you, Emperor of Tamriel and his beloved champion, agree to be bound together, in love, now and forever?"

"I do, now and forever," Martin affirmed, ardently and bittersweet, blinking away the tears that welled up as Emrys choked back a sob.

"I do," Emrys echoed, pushing past the crack of his voice, "now and forever."

"Then under the authority vested in me by the Empire, and the divine Emperor himself, I petition the blessings of Mara, Divine of Love, to declare this couple to be wed." Ocato hesitated. "I, uh, I'm afraid I haven't got any rings to present to the two of you..."

That much, at least, Martin could handle. Taking Emrys' left hand, he removed his steel gauntlet without a word; and from his own finger he slid off the ring, gold and sapphire, Emrys had given him months ago, when their love was new and there was still hope for their future, neither of them even fathoming they'd end up like this, here, counting down their last moments together in the throes of disaster.

"I have to go now, my love," he murmured softly, unable to look the other in the eyes as he fit the ring onto the other's hand. "The Dragon awaits."

"I know," Emrys replied, voice hoarse, and for the last time, he ducked down to kiss Martin - tenderly, salty with tears and bitter with mourning, and for the briefest moment the world around them _almost_ didn't matter. Till the ground shook and the roof of the temple collapsed.

At last the dawn was breaking on the long night that had befallen Tamriel in these last long, perilous months since the death of the Emperor; it was Martin who had to rise to meet it. Dagon loomed as he tore himself away from Emrys and ran headlong into the danger, clutching the Amulet at his neck as he ran. The second his feet hit the brazier that had burned the Dragonfires for centuries before, he tightened his grip, snapping the sturdy chain on his neck and smashing the striking red gem at the Amulet's center, trying not to pay any mind to the way its shards cut his hands, dragonblood trickling down his arm and palms stinging. It was a pain vastly outshone by the light that shot from the broken Amulet and consumed him, burning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i swear to god this is not bury your gays i just can't speak to it further without spoiling the future of the piece but like. it's not. i promise


	2. the dragon awakens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Chapter-specific warnings:** named minor character death, non-graphic eye trauma

Through the dark, thunder cracked as lightning split the sky; or maybe it split something else. He couldn't tell over the storm.

He couldn't tell _most_ things over the storm, beyond the chest-heavy feeling of dread that threatened to drown him. His voice cut over the cacophony, reaching his ears before he really registered it as his own - was it his own, rightly, anymore? He couldn't tell - he couldn't _tell,_ over the booming of the thunder, the booming of the panic in his voice, the booming of his heart in his chest at the insistent tug of something at his wrist. **_Don't,_** he cried. **_You don't know what you're doing._**

_I know,_ a voice replied, both familiar and yet impossibly unrecognizable, **_exactly_** _what I'm doing._

Somewhere, a glass pane shattered, and Martin sat bolt upright, drenched in his own sweat and his lungs heaving.

The world around him didn't register for several too-long moments, the head-splitting panic of... _whatever that was_ drowning out his good sense for a long moment. If he tried to recall what had happened now it only came back fragmented, disrupted, just a series of things and sounds and horrible feelings without the common thread that connected them all to make sense of it. Darkness cut only by lightning, the tugging at his wrist, the storm that nearly drowned out the voice he wanted desperately to place. The sound of shattering glass that still made dread well up in his chest. Just fragments, all of it - it was like trying to recall a dream, the kind that sat unclear in the haze of waking till you couldn't discern anything more than half-bits and almost-pieces. As his heart settled in his chest, the harder he thought on it the more familiar it all felt, that distant fog that came with those sorts of dreams that just didn't want to be remembered. A dream, then. That was all it was.

He blinked against the memory as he realized - perhaps more pressingly than that - he had no idea where he was _._ Not Cloud Ruler Temple, as he'd grown accustomed to waking in the last few months; not the Temple of the One, near as he could tell, nor anywhere in the Imperial Palace judging by the dark wood beams of the low roof and the simple, quaint architecture. He wasn't _anywhere_ he recognized, he realized as his nerves settled and the good sense the Gods gave him came trickling back; it was a small house, one whose insides he'd never seen before, with an old man he barely registered sitting at a table across from an old woman about the same age. They looked about as surprised to see Martin as he was to see them, and as he jumped to his feet, the tangled sheets on the bed still woven between his calves from restless sleep and a more restless start tripped him up and sent him careening to the hard ground.

Wood chairs clattered on the stone floor as the couple sprung to help him - not as quickly as they'd have liked in their age, perhaps, but as quickly as they could.

"Easy, son." The man got to him first, helping him to his feet, barely supporting Martin when his knees shook and threatened to give out beneath him. Standing was such a _chore_ \- he couldn't remember the last time he felt this weary, but as he struggled to wrack his harried brain for why exactly he was here, all he found was more panic, memories stopping short at the all-consuming holy fire of Akatosh and the end of an era. An end he _thought_ had culminated in his death.

"Where's Emrys?" Martin clutched at the old man, winding frantically around his upper arm with one hand and finding a fistful of his coarse linen shirt with the other. When they both stumbled, the old woman was there to keep either of them from losing their footing. "Where's- Dagon? Is he dead, what _happened?"_

" _Easy,_ " the man urged, firmer this time - maybe a little frightened, Martin's panic bleeding over. "You've been out for a couple of days now, you shouldn't just go jumping up like that. Sit down, son, take a deep breath."

It made the panic boil over worse, to have all these questions go unanswered as they burned at him, _in_ him, but as the couple helped him carefully back to the bed he resigned and swallowed his fears. It was easy to make the swimming of his head subside and the furious hammering in his chest settle when he actually took a moment and breathed, sucking in deep breaths and pushing them back out in familiar, intimate rhythms he knew too well from too many nights where the terrors that his mind conjured up saw fit to shake him from sleep in a spiraling panic just like this one.

The woman disappeared just long enough to fetch water for him, which he sucked back frantically despite himself like he hadn't had anything to drink in several centuries, cool and sweet on his tongue. She only tutted at him like a fussy mother hen to pace himself next time lest he make himself sick before shuffling off to get more.

When he felt a little more put together, and the questions still burned at him even in newfound clarity, Martin saw fit to try again. "Where is Emrys?"

The man's brows furrowed. "You mentioned him before, is he a friend of yours? I'm sorry to say I don't know anyone by that name myself."

"He's..." Martin rubbed his eyes, frustrated, trying to steel himself. "Nevermind. Where am _I?_ "

"You're in Helgen, dear," the woman replied, "do you know where that is?"

"I- no."

"It's a little keep here in the south, not far north from the border to Cyrodiil."

The _border_ to Cyrodiil, where- " _Skyrim?_ "

"Yes, dear."

Martin groaned, taking to rubbing his flat palms to his face in his agony. "How in the Nine did I get to _Skyrim?_ "

"Can't rightly say - I found you passed out in the road south of town," the man replied, scratching at his thin beard; it was patchy and scraggly with age, but it seemed he was bound and determined to keep it anyways. "No one in town recognized you but you were still breathing, so we thought it best to haul you back here and keep an eye on you till you woke up. It's been a couple of days now; not much in the way of good healers in town who could help the process along, I'm afraid. We were thinking of sending for someone if you didn't wake up here soon."

Martin's shoulder's sagged as he listened to the man speak, whole weary body feeling heavier with defeat every passing moment. "Well- well, what of the Oblivion Crisis, then? Did the gates close?"

That seemed to make the couple take pause - neither of them had a quick answer for that.

"Do you mean... the Oblivion Crisis that ended the Third Era, dear?" The old woman asked tentatively, her tone suggesting she was hoping she'd misheard him. Martin's stomach tightened, dread welling up in his chest when he considered what any one of her next answers might be and what any one of them might mean for him.

"What year is it?" He asked, more meekly than he'd meant to, mostly out of fear of sounding like an absolute madman. The couple shared a look that told him that fear had not been misplaced.

"201. Of the Fourth Era."

The answer hit like a sack of bricks and suddenly, head swimming, it was awfully hard to keep himself upright anymore. "I think perhaps I ought to get some more rest."

* * *

In the few short days he'd spent in the town of Helgen, Martin found the easiest thing to get acclimated to was the weather. Centuries had rolled by, bringing with them new wars to fight and peace treaties to argue over and politics to worry about, changing Tamriel around him slowly but surely into a world he no longer recognized. But as mortals and their domains changed, fickle and transient, at least he could count on the Gods to remain steadfast and true, and if nothing else in that moment, Martin could relish in Kynareth's cool summer breeze in the late morning sun. It kept him steady, grounded, as sweat trickled down his brow and soaked his thin linen shirt as he brought down another swing of the axe, cleaving another log as his lungs heaved.

He was still in fine physical shape, thankfully, once he'd been well fed and had gotten some _proper_ rest - not whatever the troubled slumber they'd found him in had been. Sure, maybe he regretted not taking a little more time to train with the Blades when he'd had the chance; months spent pouring over that cursed Mysterium Xarxes meant the swing of the axe took a little more effort than it should have after a few rounds and he couldn't carry quite the weight he'd wished he could anymore. But whatever left him abandoned centuries in the future on a cobblestone road in Skyrim hadn't left him broken and bruised, at least, and if he had nothing else to be thankful for, there was that.

It meant he could help pull his weight around the house, give something back to Radri and Sigva - the couple who'd taken him in when Radri first found him, and continued to take him in, now that he had nowhere else to go. Now that he had _nothing,_ really, the worn clothes they'd found him in practically rags and the only thing he'd had on his person. No Amulet of Kings - still shattered, presumably - nor the fine Imperial robes they'd gilded him in when they thought they were marching him to a coronation and not his own funeral procession; not even the fine sword Emrys had presented to him the afternoon they left for the Imperial City, a gift he'd been saving for the Emperor-to-be in a time when victory was so close they could taste it. Wherever those bygone relics of the Oblivion Crisis had gone, they were the least of his worries now.

At the moment the concern was filling in the missing two hundred years' worth of history without making half of Helgen think he was a madman. Radri and Sigva had been gracious, at least; if they thought there was something a little _off_ about a man named Martin appearing out of nowhere and asking feverish questions about the Oblivion Crisis and what year he was in, they said nothing. To the rest of the town, who'd not seen him in that disheveled, frantic state, he could play his cards a little closer to his chest; he chalked it up to amnesia with them, spinning a poor tale about a priest from Cyrodiil who couldn't remember how he'd gotten here, how he must have been attacked on the road and separated from his husband, for whom he worried so, and how the amnesia was making his memory about lots of things they took for granted, like the Stormcloak Rebellion or the White-Gold Concordat, fuzzy at best. Not much of a stretch of the truth, at least, which made him feel better about lying to them. Although, by all accounts, the worry he feigned for Emrys cut the deepest when in reality, those two hundred years had _definitely_ made him a widower. At least that minute and a half they'd been married was the best minute and a half of his life, he'd joke grimly to himself, hoping eventually the humor would help make the ache go away.

They weren't scholars by trade - and the rest of Helgen, a military keep first and foremost, had little to offer in the way of reading material - but what few books Ragvi and Sigva _did_ have helped, at least. He'd spent more than a few of his restless nights pouring over them by candlelight, trying to make sense of how the world had changed in the two hundred years he'd been absent from it. And _much_ had changed, for that matter - the Red Year, the rise of the Aldmeri Dominion, the Great War and the White-Gold Concordat and all the peril and strife _that_ had lead to, all of it dwarfed the Oblivion Crisis by comparison, and he was so busy trying to keep up with everything that he barely had time to worry about what had changed in the years immediately following the Crisis. Not that the books would have given him much to go on, anyways - the one that spoke of the Crisis ended immediately after his sacrifice, and scarcely mentioned Emrys at all, let alone his eventual fate from there on out. If he was going to be stuck there for good, in 4th Era Skyrim, perhaps once he got his bearings enough to travel he'd hunt down a more suitable library. The College in Winterhold, maybe, if it was still standing - he hadn't gotten around to asking yet.

Beyond the books, the townsfolk of Helgen had plenty to say; when he wasn't helping around the house, or reading into odd hours of the night, he was talking to who he could, and they were kind to him, generally. Even the soldiers of the Legion, who recognized him as an Imperial and perhaps took pity on him, took the time out of their busy days to speak with him when they could. And the people picked up where the books fell short - the contemporary rumor mill. Too much of it was petty gossip and outlandish tall tales blown out of proportion - _Did you hear that Maven Black-briar had her own son arrested? I heard that a boy in Windhelm ran away from the orphanage and has been performing the Black Sacrament!_ But those that gave him something worthwhile to listen to helped shape his understanding of the modern world more than anything else. Perhaps after a few more weeks of this, he could even start to pretend he knew what in Oblivion was going on anymore.

Leaning for a moment on the axe for support, Martin took a long pause from the morning woodcutting to wipe the sweat from his brow with the hem of his shirt, not much else to offer a reprieve in the moment but Kynareth's sweet breeze cool on his skin. Helgen around him bustled, as much as a small military town could do so, and he took a moment to look out over it, watching people pass; a woman named Rida that he'd come to know walked her young son to the store, while Vilod walked a crate of his mead down the road. Across town, at the end of the road and just within Martin's line of sight, a handful of Imperial Soldiers spoke with two tall high elves in exquisitely designed armor. Neither of them he recognized, but he didn't need to, to know them as Thalmor.

Sigva came down the road around then, returning from the store with a basket full of food and a grave look on her face.

"Come help me put these away, dear," was all she said as she passed, but her tone suggested it was more than that. Martin didn't linger outside for long.

He closed the door gently behind him as Sigva began unloading her basket onto the home's small table. Radri stood, tending to the stew his wife had started for lunch.

"The Imperials are holding executions in town in a bit," Sigva remarked, idly yet gravely, as Martin gathered the produce up to store in the cellar. "Very spur of the moment."

He frowned at her. "Is that why I saw Thalmor in town?"

Behind her, Radri bristled. Stormcloak sympathizer, Martin had to remember. Not like the Imperials liked the Thalmor much better, but on the outside they were willing to at least feign civility.

Sigva was silent for a moment longer. "They've captured Ulfric Stormcloak not far from here," she continued eventually. "I heard his carriage is about an hour from town."

The wooden spoon clattered against the sides of the pot as Radri dropped it, hurrying out of the house. Presumably to go hear the grave news for himself from the mouth of one of the Imperial soldiers - Martin dared not chase after him, sighing and rounding the table to attend to the stew himself instead.

"Why are they doing it here instead of somewhere bigger?" He asked, looking up for a moment. Something monumental as this would warrant a bigger audience, he would think; a hold capital, maybe.

"The Imperials want him dead as quickly as they can manage," Sigva replied. "I think they'd have butchered him like a wild dog already if it wasn't for Imperial war conduct. Respect for the enemy and all."

Martin hummed solemnly in agreement. Lunch that morning would be... different.

* * *

The grey cover of cloud that Skyrim was so accustomed to had moved in by the time the executions were supposed to take place, just a little after noon; a storm was brewing, somewhere in the distance, and Martin only hoped they could be inside before it hit.

He stood at the edge of the road with Sigva, arms folded over his chest and expression grave as they watched the Imperial soldiers filter in slowly, guiding the carriages full of prisoners along like a funeral procession. Radri remained at home - brooding, and angry, he wanted his time to seethe alone, not watch the beheading of the man whose cause he wholeheartedly believed in. If he wasn't so aged, Radri probably would have run off and joined the rebellion months ago.

In ordinary circumstances, Martin himself would loathe to watch something so gruesome as public executions, but the gravity of the situation wasn't lost on him; Ulfric Stormcloak would die that day, and the tides of Skyrim's civil war would be irrevokably changed. It seemed too momentous to miss. Although a priestess of Arkay would perform the proper rites for the prisoners, he felt compelled to whisper his own prayers, asking Akatosh to bless and keep each soul as they shuffled loose their mortal coils.

The Kingslayer rode in on the second carriage; Martin didn't recognize any of the other prisoners, and that was to be expected, but the way they'd bound and gagged Ulfric, muffled his Voice in fear of it, gave him away quickly.

And yet somehow it was the Redguard woman beside him that managed to take Martin's attention away, made his blood run cold. For the briefest moment their eyes met as the carriage passed; there was venom and vitriol in her eyes that made his stomach turn, and that was fair, from someone being hauled off to their death. But it was more than that. Something about the fire in her gaze nagged at him, deeply, at some buried ancient part. The piece of him that had known it was true when he was named the Emperor's only living heir; the part that knew, when the time came, that his destiny laid in the shattering of the Amulet and the glory of his God. And for a brief moment, a flash of recognition in her eyes made him wonder if she felt it, too, whatever _it_ was.

And then the moment was over, and the woman ripped her lingering gaze away to glare her daggers at someone else. Martin let out a ragged breath, realizing he'd stopped breathing altogether for a moment, and turned away to watch the other carriage like that would make him forget the feeling of dread she instilled deep in him.

They were too far away to hear what was being said as the prisoners were ordered to step off the carriages, processed one by one. Hadvar - one of the few soldiers stationed in town Martin knew by name - stood next to an Imperial woman he didn't know, helped her check each of the prisoners off the list. He winced at the prisoner in rags who thought himself quicker than an arrow, howling about how he wasn't one of them when he dropped dead mere yards from Martin and Sigva. Beside him she hissed out a gasp - whether at grief for this man she'd never known or at anguish for the brutality of it all, he couldn't say - and gently grabbed the crook of Martin's elbow for comfort, looking away from the body as soldiers hurried in to take care of it and get it away from the townsfolk.

There was a moment where the Imperials stopped short at the Redguard, like they weren't sure what to do with her, but she was filed off with the rest - or the rest still living, at least - and she placed herself in line without so much as half the protest of the now-dead runner. She, like Ulfric, seemed resigned to her death, even if furious about it.

In the distance, something guttural bellowed - a sound Martin couldn't place, but that shook him to his bones - and he exchanged a glance with Sigva. Though the Imperials murmured amongst themselves for a moment, it didn't slow them down. Maybe it was nothing.

When the headsman brought the axe down on the neck of the first man, Martin mouthed his silent prayer to Akatosh, and the roar rang out again across the dreary afternoon skies.

"What _is_ that?" He asked hushedly to Sigva, stomach twisting up, but she only shook her head, no answer to give. No one knew.

The Redguard came next, and she stepped with purpose to the block. Silent, unlike the man before her, although Martin hadn't been able to hear the man's exact last words. It was hard to focus on her as she dropped to her knees when Martin knew something was coming - what, he couldn't say, but he could feel the rumbling of its approach in his bones. His hands flexed instinctively, making to cast something without really having decided what, or even yet knowing why.

As the headsman raised his axe on the Redguard, something black, hideous, and more importantly, _massive_ descended on the fort's tower behind him; the force of its landing made Martin stumble, knocking the headsman off his feet entirely.

He wasn't an expert, and may not have seen one in person before, but by all accounts, the thing with the burning, beady red eyes bellowing in tongues he did not know was _definitely_ a dragon.

Martin moved on instinct - there were civilians around, scattering as unnatural clouds swirled around the black beast and burning stones descended from the heavens, and though he told himself he would not have a repeat of Kvatch, he feared it was already too late. He covered Sigva immediately, ushering her away from the dragon and helping up a man who had fallen on the way.

"We've got to get to Radri," he shouted over the commotion, but Sigva didn't exactly need him to tell her, already headed in that direction. The thrashing of the great beast's body was collapsing buildings by the minute, making debris and rubble difficult to avoid, but the further away they got from it the clearer the path was, so as long as they kept moving they should have been safe.

Halfway to the house, one well-placed strike from the beast's tail as it took flight sent the last of the tower tumbling onto the house; Martin stopped cold, eyes wide in shock and heart in his throat with grief, watching as under the collapse, what remained of its debris lit aflame, probably the burning hearth catching. If he was thinking about trying to dig Radri out of the rubble, the second collapse that blocked their path quickly quelled that thought.

Instead he pulled Sigva under the cover of a half-destroyed house as the beast swept over them, rumbling of its great beating wings shaking the ground, and Martin thanked Akatosh silently when it did not descend to finish them off. He took the brief moment of reprieve to gather his bearings and look out onto the already mostly-destroyed town that had become his home the last few days. The streets were mostly free of the living, anyone who wasn't already a corpse having taken cover where they could; there was shouting from across a massive blockade of one of the collapsed towers, and through the cracks Martin could make out figures fleeing into the few still-standing buildings. There was an underkeep to the town, if he recalled correctly, whose entrance was on that half of the road; what lucky few they were, he thought, to be trapped on that side instead of his own.

Around him Helgen burned, and beside him Sigva shook and wept; he instinctively wrapped an arm around her shoulders as he looked out at the town around them, and realized, with great dread in his heart, that this was _not_ a repeat of Kvatch. Kvatch had survivors - Kvatch had a temple to hide in where he could comfort and protect the those that remained, and wait out help to arrive. Kvatch had been able to rebuild. This was a bloodbath, with no shelter or sanctuary to be found that would last much longer than a few fleeting moments before fire and carnage took it, and Martin had a hard time believing there was going to be a knight in shining armor - literal or otherwise - who could rescue them from this one. Helgen felt, in the moment, remarkably like the end of the damn world.

Their own collapsed ruin of a building that they'd taken refuge in wouldn't last long. If he wanted either of them to survive, he had to act fast - another quick sweep of the town looking for any more permanent refuge yielded nothing, but as soon as his eyes fixed on the gap in the wall not a stone's throw away, a sinking heart came with the realization of what he had to do. If he wanted either of them to survive, leaving the rest of the town for dead was his only option.

If it was just him, he'd probably stay; it wouldn't have been the first time he did something stupid and self-sacrificial, only this time all of Tamriel wouldn't be on the line and he probably wouldn't wind up succeeding in saving anyone else, not with the beast he was up against. But Sigva beside him, she changed everything. If he ran now and abandoned the town, he'd never forgive himself; but if he let her die, that would be even worse.

If he could only save one life, Martin decided, it would have been worth it.

"Sigva." He spoke as gently as he could, invoking the voice he used in the temple to comfort the grieving and the heartbroken. "We cannot stay here. There's a gap in the wall across the road - I want you to go first, and I'll cover you from behind, alright? Can you do that?"

She nodded wearily and took only a moment more to compose herself before moving as quickly as she could out of the cover of the broken home - which wasn't, admittedly, very fast at all, but at this rate any pace that kept them moving closer to safety was good enough. Martin followed closely after, willing magic to well up in his hands - he hadn't used it since he'd awoken, and something in his body protested against the action, like he'd gone much longer than he thought without casting. But he pushed past the pain, filed the ache away for later when he had time to lament about how out of practice he was.

They moved not a moment too soon, as the beast's fire razed the house, waves of heat rolling off his back; as he pulled Sigva suddenly behind the cover of a fallen chunk of stone, the place in the road where they'd stood seconds before was swallowed by its fire, too.

The beast spoke in that tongue again as it swept overhead - the one he knew, deep down in his bones, but didn't _understand_. But it passed them, heading for the towers and the underkeep beyond the rubble Martin had seen the others fleeing into, and its dark tongue was added to the long list of things he could worry about later. For now, they had an opening to seize.

"Keep moving."

Martin kept a close eye on the dragon as they moved again, watching it circle the other side of town - pre-occupied, but with no promise that reprieve would last for long.

The break in the wall meant rubble, naturally - they might have clambered over it if Sigva were younger and faster and more suitably dressed for a dragon attack, but in their present circumstances Martin was fairly certain taking that long would only get them killed. Martin forced the wellspring of magic into his hand again, and ignored the angry ache of his muscles when he cast this time; his own palisades of Oblivion opened for a brief moment to let a Frost Atronach through, towering over both of them.

"Clear the way," he commanded, and although slow and ungainly, it obeyed without question, great fists battering the heavy, broken pieces of stone and pushing them from the gap with a terrible splintering sound.

The dragon behind them roared, and Martin turned just in time to watch it turn away from the underkeep and set its grim, beady sights on the gap in the wall; he'd been hoping the atronach wouldn't draw its attention, but there was very little luck with them on that grave afternoon.

But another forceful strike pushed away enough of the wall to let even the atronach through; though the three of them wouldn't make it far if they tried to leave now with a dragon in pursuit, Martin had a feeling he could make their odds a little better.

"Sigva, go, I'll catch up," he called over the growing rumble of the dragon closing in. There was well-placed hesitance plain on her face but a quick order barked to the atronach to protect her eased her reluctance at least enough to get her to move into the wilds beyond Helgen. Martin, on the other hand, turned away from her, into the danger, and ran.

His shoulder bit the ground as he rolled to avoid a plume of flame, barely picking himself up in time to duck behind a piece of broken stone before the fire hot on his trail could make short work of him. His lungs heaved, but cover afforded him just long enough to bring magic to his other hand and summon another atronach, Flame this time, in the middle of the road - far from him, and more importantly even farther from Sigva. It wouldn't last long, but he didn't need it to; he just needed the dragon to take the bait.

The beast circled, and the atronach hurled a bolt of fire at it; it didn't seem hurt by it, but it did seem _mad,_ barking out another shout in that unknown tongue and doubling back on the atronach. A well-placed burst of flame made quick work of the atronach, and Martin could feel its tethers come undone as it combusted in the middle of the broken town, but it drew the dragon's ire long enough for Martin to find better cover, summoning another atronach in its place as Martin dashed to the broken general store. The second got two shots off before the dragon destroyed it, but the dragon hadn't seen him amidst all the chaos, Martin quickly realized; it was most certainly looking for him, circling overhead with great ire in every wingbeat, but for now in the cover of the half-destroyed building he was safe, or at the very least, as safe as he could be.

He released the magic in his hand in shock, fizzling out uncast and magicka dispersing almost painfully back into his body, when he realized he wasn't alone.

He knew the boy in the shadows of the broken building, cowering under the splintered timber; his gut twisted when he realized that he recognized the boy's mother Rida, too, cold and mostly crushed beneath a heavy beam.

"Come here, little one," Martin beckoned, tone hushed and arms open; the boy was no more than five, certainly not big enough to match his pace if he ran for it, and it complicated things, having to figure out how he'd make it back to the gap in the wall with the boy in his arms - _if_ the gap was even still there at all. But leaving him didn't even occur to Martin - it was just one more layer to the already strenuous situation, but whether or not to take the burden wasn't so much as a question in his mind.

The boy stood stock still, frozen in fear, his frame trembling visibly; Martin crouched carefully, bringing himself more to his level, and beckoned again.

"It's okay. I'll keep you safe, I promise."

Though he hesitated, jerking forward a little before thinking better of it and pressing himself against the broken wall behind him, eventually the boy relented, stumbling forward again and this time into Martin's arms.

The small triumph lasted only long enough for Martin to scoop him up and lift him before wingbeats rattled the frame of the collapsed store and the ground shook as the dragon landed before them.

_"Siiv hi."_

Martin's blood went cold as its stark red gaze met his, the beast so large that just its head outside their hiding place nearly filled the entire gap. If there was anything he could do, there was no time for him to figure out what it was; no ward would protect him from a dragon's flame, no spell he knew would be enough to stagger it, and in that moment all Martin had time to do was twist his back to the beast to shield the boy with his body and hope it would be enough. Just a handful of short days had passed since he was given his second chance after closing shut the jaws of Oblivion, and if this was how it had to end, then so be it.

Martin clamped his eyes shut and waited for the flames to lap at his back, praying to Akatosh it was a quicker death than most who were burned alive were afforded.

The heat of dragonfire never came; instead the beast bellowed in profound pain.

He almost didn't want to risk the look behind him, but when he did he saw the arrow buried in its left eye as it staggered backwards and away in agony. Martin and the boy were forgotten as the beast cursed, presumably, in its tongue, and scrambled away, taking flight after new prey. And through a gap in the collapsed beams, Martin looked to where the arrow had come from and there he saw her - the Redguard, wild curls billowing in the wind, atop the last standing tower of the keep with a worn bow in hand and another arrow already notched.

As quickly as he'd seen her she disappeared back beneath the wall, and then the dragon was there, throwing its entire body angrily into the tower in retaliation. He found himself praying again, this time that she somehow made it down in time as it began to collapse. But she'd given him his third chance now - the beast was thoroughly distracted, and as the boy clutched at his shirt tightly in terror, Martin had no hesitation in seizing the new opportunity to sprint from his cover towards freedom at the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dovahzul translation: _Siiv hi_ \- "found you"


	3. a chance meeting

The party wasn't exactly much, tired and soot-caked and worse for wear, but they were _alive_ by the time they made it to Riverwood, and that was enough. It was about halfway down the road that Sigva stopped being able to walk the rest of the way; Martin carried her on his back from then on, and the boy, Brami, followed close beside with a tiny fist curled into the worn linen of Martin's shirt. He wished he could have given them all a break - Riverwood was a long walk, and if he felt it was safe he'd have stopped a while along the road, as much for the both of them as for himself. But he'd spent enough time listening to the local gossip to know the roads were growing more dangerous by the day in Skyrim, and he loathed the idea of giving even more trouble the chance to catch up with them in their already sorry state. He hadn't saved them all from an honest to the Gods dragon attack just for wolves or a few bandits to do them in on the road.

As soon as the guards saw them, still a ways from the borders of the town, they immediately sprung into action.

"Someone go get Delphine!"

When one of the guards ran for help, two more sprinted to meet the refugees in the road. It was a great weight off, in the literal sense, when they helped Sigva off Martin's back and supported her instead, and he rolled his aching shoulders, listening to them pop as the guards looked between the group frantically.

"What happened, lad?"

"There's been a dragon attack at Helgen," Martin replied gravely. "Are we really the first to make it here?"

The guards exchanged a look.

"You don't... you don't think that's what Bardi saw flying over the hills a few hours ago, do you?"

Brow furrowed, the other guard could only rub his mouth anxiously. "Shor's Bones..."

* * *

Riverwood was a welcoming enough town, at least; the people were more than happy to take in a handful of refugees, only hospitality in their hearts for the displaced and shaken. Delphine's inn became the base of operations, at least for a little while - she and the woman that ran the mill seemed to be the de facto leaders of the settlement, and when the guards had run to fetch her, she immediately brought them into her fold, having the space cleared at one of her tables to get each of them looked at.

"I'm not a healer by trade," she warned, looking over Sigva for injuries. It had been a miracle that she survived with nothing more than a cut on the forehead, which wasn't difficult for Delphine's Restoration magic to patch up. Even more miraculous that Martin and Brami escaped unharmed at all, given what they'd been through.

"Hod and I have the space to take them," Gerdur remarked as she hovered nervously, arms folded across her chest and brow furrowed. "It's no Palace of the Kings, but they can stay as long as they like."

"Thank you." Martin bowed his head in gratitude. Truth be told, he had no idea how long he wanted to stay - it wasn't as though he had anywhere else to go, but it was only a few short days ago that he'd woken up and Helgen had become his temporary home. Now he was dealing with a dragon attack - an actual, honest to Gods dragon attack - and all of that had been uprooted again. He imagined at some point he'd need to start figuring out the why of it all - sadly, something told him a little town like Riverwood wasn't exactly going to have many of those answers.

Delphine got them fed, and when the bone-deep weariness of it all began to _really_ set in, all Sigva wanted was a long nap. Brami had already begun to nod off on Martin's shoulder; he ignored the screaming ache of his back and his shoulders as he carried the boy, following with Sigva as Gerdur lead them back to the house.

In the peaceful quiet of the dimly lit cellar, Martin laid Brami gently in one of the guest beds, smoothing a gentle hand over the boy's forehead. Sigva had already laid herself down on her own guest bed, and he hoped rest would find her quickly, and untroubled; but when he looked at the remaining empty bed in the cellar, the one that should have been meant for him, despite tired eyes and an aching body he wanted nothing less than to lay himself down in it.

Martin's mind had been unkind to him his whole life - he'd been young when the nightmares really started, and now in hindsight he knew many of them were visions of the future. Of Kvatch, Oblivion, his final moments in the Imperial City - none that he could recall of Helgen, now that he thought about it - and of all the little horrors inbetween. And now, enough had happened to him in his long years that the dreams didn't have to be prophetic in nature to be harrowing. With the waking nightmare of Helgen still fresh and raw, his mind would have no trouble finding something to torment him with when he finally thought fit to lay his head for a bit. He could stand to go a little while longer before reliving it all again, he decided.

A little fist curled into the dirty linen of his shirt wordlessly as he turned to find his repose somewhere else in the cool quiet of the afternoon outside, and Martin looked down - Brami still hadn't spoken a word since Martin found him in the rubble of Helgen, but he didn't need to speak to beg the priest to stay. So with tired eyes and a gentle smile, Martin settled back down on the floor, pushing the hair from the boy's eyes softly.

"Sleep," Martin urged, voice barely above a whisper. "You're safe here."

He knew the words were hollow comfort to any of them. But if he stayed at Brami's side a little longer, perhaps the boy might find it in himself to believe them long enough to rest.

* * *

Riverwood felt like Helgen had, before everything went to hell: entirely _too_ quiet and peaceful. He should be grateful, Martin figured, for the reprieve after everything he'd been through, but like coming to after the twilight hour of the Oblivion Crisis, sitting in Riverwood after everything that had happened brought no solace when everything felt so heavy. The soft breeze rustling through the trees, the song of birds and the distant blacksmith's hammer, life moving on around him when he himself felt utterly and completely lost was just the wake after the storm.

Gerdur refused his help around the mill - told him he should be getting rest after everything he'd been through, and that was fair. Given how disoriented he felt, he wasn't sure he'd do anything more than get in the way anyhow. But the idea of resting his head for a while still seemed out of the question - the stench of smoke still lingered on his skin even long after she'd given him a change of clothes that weren't covered in soot and sweat and blood that wasn't his, and even if sleep managed to find him with that permeating in his nose he didn't think his mind would be particularly kind to him.

At Cloud Ruler he'd at least had their library to occupy himself after Kvatch, before the Mysterium Xarxes gave him real work to do, even if idle study mostly just managed to make him feel useless. Even in Helgen there was always something to do - if he wasn't helping around the house, reading through their meager collection of books kept him occupied till he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer, and by then he was usually too tired to dream. But Gerdur and Hod didn't have even half the meager gathering of books Sigva and Radri had to offer. And all of it left him with idle hands and the weight of feeling lost.

That directionlessness had left him sitting rather uselessly on their low porch watching the chickens peck at the lawn; they regarded him with caution, then curiosity, and then keen disinterest when they realized he had nothing for them, but when he spotted their feed bag on a high table against the house and took a handful, suddenly he became a lot more interesting. They flocked, and he sprinkled out his handful for them little by little; and perhaps it wasn't particularly _productive_ \- he assumed they'd been fed in the morning, and they'd be satisfied with whatever grubs they could dig up before supper, he was sure - but it was something to do, keeping him at least occupied enough not to think too hard about the last few days.

Over their eager clucking, he almost missed the commotion coming from down the road. Martin twisted over his shoulder, trying to peer around the house from where he sat at what was going on; high and frantic voices cut through the peaceful quietude of the town, and though he couldn't make out what they said from where they sat, he watched Delphine and a handful of guards rush Hadvar and the Redguard into the inn.

Martin stood quickly, tossing out the last of his handful for the chickens distractedly, the birds all but forgotten as he found himself following after, pace quickening to a jog just to catch up. By the time he pushed open the doors to the inn they'd already gotten the Redguard settled at the table that still stood cleared from earlier that afternoon; Delphine had wasted no time inspecting her, particularly interested in her ribcage and her head, even as the Redguard tried to insist it wasn't as bad as it seemed.

The guards quickly found themselves out of anything to do, and Martin fought to weave around them and narrowly push past as they tried to slip back out the door he'd just come through. If he'd meant to remain unnoticed, that was out of the question once Hadvar turned, eyes brightening with tangible relief the second he spotted him.

"Martin!" He cried, and with a bright grin clapped him hard on the shoulder before giving him a rough half-hug with one of his arms that nearly knocked him off his feet. If he were being honest, Martin was just impressed Hadvar even remembered his name after the whole conversation and a half they'd exchanged total back in Helgen.

"I'm glad you're well, friend," Martin replied weakly, barely able to reciprocate the hug with more than a feeble pat before Hadvar pulled away to inspect him instead.

"You look unharmed," he observed pleasedly. "Thank the Eight we weren't the only ones that made it out. Has anyone else come through Riverwood?"

Martin shook his head. "I escaped with Sigva and Rida's son. But we were the first to bring the news. And no one's made it to town since."

Hadvar nodded solemnly, brow furrowing. "What about Radri? And Rida herself...?"

"Radri was in their home when the beast destroyed it. Rida... I found Brami with her body crushed beneath the rubble of the general store."

Hadvar looked somewhere between heartbroken and horrified. "The poor boy... may Arkay bless and keep them both. Where are the other two now?"

"Asleep at Gerdur's, the mill owner," Martin replied. "She's offered to take us all in for as long as we need. Although-" He didn't want to seem ungrateful, but he was in familiar company, at least, with someone who knew his plight a little better than the rest of the townsfolk of Riverwood. "I'm not entirely sure how long I should be staying."

Hadvar nodded understandingly. "I imagine wherever your husband is, he's worried sick about you."

He knew it was the half-lie he'd told Hadvar and anyone else who'd asked in Helgen. But it couldn't stop the way his heart practically stopped in his chest, being reminded of how Emrys was long gone and he was thoroughly alone. If the despair showed on his face, the soldier said nothing.

"I just want to get back to him as quickly as I can," was all Martin said, voice remarkably even for the circumstances.

Hadvar nodded again. As if sensing Martin's ache - although for all the wrong reasons - he changed the subject, nodding at the Redguard. "Ven and I were the only ones that could make it out on our end. Though we got separated from a few other folks along the way. I have no idea how many of them might have managed to survive."

Ven looked up at them both on hearing her name, warm brown eyes glinting in the hearthlight; her gaze lacked the fire and the ferocity she had burned with on that carriage in Helgen, but still it made his stomach churn, that ancient part of him nagging at him again. Whether the recognition in her eyes was simply the surprise at seeing a familiar face, or the same gut-deep feeling that told him there was something simultaneously extraordinary and not quite right about that exchanging of glances, he couldn't tell.

"Ven also is a very long way from home," Hadvar said slowly, pointedly, pulling Martin's attention back. "She's hoping to get off her feet and get started again soon. Since she left so much behind in Helgen."

He spoke very deliberately, and his meaning couldn't have been more clear if he'd painted it on his forehead. "Of course," Martin replied, nodding understandingly. _I won't say a word,_ he meant, _about how she was saved narrowly from execution by the world's worst lucky break,_ and Hadvar looked relieved to know they understood each other.

"Where will _you_ go after this?" Hadvar asked seriously, suddenly. "I can't imagine you'll want to stay for too long right now."

"No," Martin agreed, shaking his head, but faltered. "I... well, truth be told, I have no idea where I'll go. Whiterun is the closest city if I remember correctly, isn't it? So, there, I suppose. I just... need to find answers."

Hadvar nodded understandingly, and then dropped his voice. "Listen, I need someone to go to the Jarl of Whiterun and tell him what happened here. If something like that happens in Riverwood, they aren't protected enough to deal with something as world-ending as a _dragon._

"But I need to report to Solitude, make sure the Legion knows, and make sure I don't get branded some sort of deserter." Hadvar glanced over at Ven, where Delphine was busy taking her restoration magic to the other's sides, before turning back to Martin. "I've already talked to her about it, and she's already agreed to go. I want you to talk to her about tagging along."

"I- why?" It was hard not to let his surprise betray his volume.

"You haven't exactly got anywhere else to go," Hadvar explained, like Martin needed the reminder, "and I can't stick around to help. I wish I could take you with me, but I haven't got the time to help you figure everything out. But Ven is capable - she certainly doesn't need anyone looking after her, but... and forgive me if I'm misjudging you, friend, but I get the feeling you're going to need someone looking after you."

That was fair, Martin conceded to himself. He wasn't exactly a spring chicken, nor was he a pushover, and holding his own in a battle shouldn't have been hard under normal circumstances. But these were very much _not_ normal circumstances, and his body still acted like he hadn't cast in two centuries at least - which, as far as he was aware, was true. He was out of practice, and stuck in an unfamiliar world, and... for as much as he hated to give that nagging feeling any creedence, it was hard not to trust whatever that looming ancient part of him was. Not after everything he'd been through.

"Okay," Martin conceded, quietly. "I'll speak with her about it."

It seemed to relieve Hadvar greatly to hear it because his face lit up brightly. "You're going to be in good hands, I promise you."

"That should do it," Delphine announced - more to Ven than anyone else - standing straight and looking the other over like she was admiring her handiwork. Ven stretched stiffly, and felt at her ribcage, but didn't wince, and that seemed to be a good sign. "That should hold even if you run off and do something stupid. You're lucky it was just the one rib."

"Thank you," Ven replied genuinely, sounding rather relieved to be out of pain. "I know all of this can't be easy on you..."

Delphine waved her off dismissively. "Please. You were caught in a dragon attack - I probably wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't seen the state of the first batch of refugees. The least we can do is take care of you folk after something like that."

Ven nodded quietly, looking like she was reluctant to argue.

"Your aunt and uncle will be worried sick about you," Delphine remarked pointedly to Hadvar, with almost a warning note in her voice, like he'd better hurry his sorry backside over there and stop making them fret. So Hadvar was from here, or at least had family here - at least he had somewhere familiar to go back to.

Hadvar laughed nervously, scratching the back of his neck. "I'm headed straight over, ma'am, I promise."

She fixed him a pointed look that said, _you'd better,_ but nodded. "The three of you let Orgnar and I know if you need anything. We'll keep you taken care of. Just don't expect to be drinking for free forever."

They thanked Delphine and she left them, and Hadvar turned back to the other two. "Delphine's right, I really should go see my aunt and uncle. Ven, come by the blacksmith's when you're done here, I'll make sure they give you a place to stay."

Ven made to speak and looked halfway like she was going to protest, but the words died lamely in her throat, and instead she snapped her mouth shut in concession before trying again. "Thank you."

"Come visit before you get out of town," Hadvar said to Martin, with one last solid clap on the shoulder as he passed and made for the door.

When he left them, the heavy silence settled in between Martin and Ven, awkwardly the longer he took to decide what he was going to say. He found her looking to him expectantly - and perhaps a bit annoyedly - when she realized he was trying to say something, eyebrows half-raised, and Martin swallowed thickly.

"I wanted to say thank you," he remarked finally, breaking the tense silence between the two of them. "You saved my life in Helgen. And I owe you for that, truly."

She couldn't keep the surprise off her face at his words. "How exactly did I save your life?"

"When you shot that... beast in the eye. It had me cornered beneath the rubble. Had you not intervened when you did, well... I don't think I or either of the refugees I escaped with would be here now."

"Ahh." She leaned back against the table, expression softening like it all made sense now. There was a moment of considerable silence as she decided what to say next, before finally, bluntly, "Right place right time, I guess. A lot of people weren't so lucky. But... I'll take the credit for your good fortune if you really want. So. You're welcome, I suppose."

Martin blinked in surprise - he wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but it certainly wasn't _that_ brusque a reply.

"Glad it did _someone_ good," she continued, standing suddenly and stretching her side stiffly, prodding at her ribcage again. "Broke my damn rib when the thing crashed into the tower. I'm surprised I didn't wind up crushed to death in the rubble. _Bastard._ I hope the fires of Oblivion roast it alive."

Martin winced. "How does it feel?"

"Whole," she replied plainly. "I know the innkeeper said she wasn't a healer by trade but she sure knows her way around restoration magic."

Martin nodded understandingly. "She took care of us when we first arrived in town. They're lucky to have her here."

"Almost makes you wonder what she did before settling down to become an innkeeper."

Martin shifted nervously. Maybe, but the same could be said for the Priest of Akatosh who was a little too comfortable killing to defend himself or holding his own in battle. He knew better than anyone some questions were just better off left unanswered. "Whatever it was," Martin replied, "what matters now is that she's here and able to help people the way she does. Whatever her history, it's in the past now."

"I did say _almost._ " Ven shot him a wry smile. "Listen, I'm glad you made it out of there," she sighed finally, not sounding terribly sincere about that at all, "but I should probably get to the blacksmith's before it gets too late. Figure out what I'm doing for the night."

When the Redguard brushed past him and made for the door, Martin instinctively reached out to grab her arm. "Oh, wait-"

She wheeled on him like she was about ready to put him flat on his back for the move, and he quickly released his grasp.

"I'm sorry - Hadvar asked me to speak with you."

Ven raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

"You'll be going to Whiterun after this, won't you?" Martin asked.

Ven's expression turned to a scowl, like the reminder of what she'd agreed to wasn't welcome. "Hadvar told you about what he bullied me into, I see."

He frowned, giving a hesitant nod. "He thought it would be a good idea if I went with you."

Her scowl deepened, the eyebrow raising again - half incredulous, half irate at the mere suggestion. "I don't need looking after."

"No," he agreed hastily, "after Helgen you've made that terribly clear. But I..." Well, he hesitated to say that he _did_. The last thing he needed - or wanted - was some kind of a babysitter. And he was done, after months holed up with the Blades, feeling useless and discomfited while someone else was out there throwing themselves into danger for him. But he wasn't about to go it alone, lost and mazed two centuries out of his element, either.

"They found me unconscious on the road outside of Helgen only a few days ago," Martin explained plainly. "I have no memory of what happened - well, I'm missing most of my memory, if I'm being honest. But I know I was travelling with my husband, and whatever happened to us, I need answers if I'm ever going to find him or get back to where I need to be. But I have no idea where to start, and I'm afraid I can't do this alone."

The lie was getting easier to tell, it seemed, every time he had to recite it.

Ven frowned firmly, and there was conflict in her eyes as he watched her mull it over in her head. From the once-over she gave him he could tell she was sizing him up, and he wasn't entirely sure she liked what she was seeing. She stood perhaps an inch or so taller than him, broad-shouldered but lean; he'd seen her skill with a bow already and judging by the pale scar that cut across her dark skin, the long-healed remnant of a gash down her left brow and cheekbone that had narrowly missed her eye, she certainly wasn't a stranger to combat. If he had to guess, she probably didn't have all the years as a priest under her belt that had made him soft and unpolished with age and inactivity, either.

"I'm a fine enough mage," he pitched in, like it would sweeten the pot, "if still getting my bearings after everything. I won't be dead weight, if that's what you're worried about."

"No, I know, I saw you on the ground in Helgen," she replied slowly, still deliberating. "Holding your own as bait against a dragon, that's not a small feat. Even if it was... stupid." After one long moment more, she nodded slowly, seemingly satisfied. "I'm going to Riften after. I've got business, and I won't take you any farther. Or take any detours for your sake. But if you want to tag along, I'm not going to stop you."

Martin's shoulders sagged in relief, and he nodded more enthusiastically than he meant to. "Thank you. Truly."

"Just don't expect me to stick my neck out for you or something if you do something stupid or almost get yourself killed," she warned sternly.

He only smiled politely - there were any number of remarks he could make that he decided would be less than well-behaved. Instead, Martin replied, "No, of course not."


	4. before the storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> camp nanowrimo last month went.. some type of way, but the good news is i will for sure be able to stick to my goal of publishing at least _something_ every wednesday, except for a bye week the last wednesday of every month to keep me ahead of the game. with the sheer amount i have written right now (i think, at the time of writing this, nearly through to the end of chapter 8?) it's going to be chapters of this for, like, a while.

"Martin."

The priest jerked awake with a start with the stench of ash and burning flesh fresh in his mind, but the cellar of Gerdur's house was quiet and cool and only smelled of dust and cedar beams, to his great relief, and he heaved out a shaky sigh. Sigva's hand lingered on his arm.

"You seemed like you were having a nightmare, dear." She frowned softly, concern visible on her worn and aged face.

"I'm sorry," was all Martin could manage. He pulled himself up to sit, shoulders slouching, as he wiped the sweat from his forehead with his worn linen sleeve. "I hope I didn't wake you."

"Breakfast has been ready upstairs for a while, actually," Sigva replied. The cellar, windowless, remained dark - who knew how long Martin had slept in for.

"What time is it?" He groaned.

"Only a few hours past sunrise."

Martin swore under his breath as he jumped out of bed - tacking on a quiet "sorry" to Sigva for the unbecoming language - and quickly began pulling together what little things he had.

_"I'm leaving at dawn,"_ Ven had warned him, sternly, and in a tone that had made him believe she really meant it, _"and I'm not waiting around for you either. So be at the blacksmith's by sunrise or figure out how to get to Whiterun on your own."_

Of course he didn't think that would be a problem - he never expected to get any _real_ sleep after the nightmare that was Helgen. He was sure his mind and body needed the rest it had decided to afford him, but he barely felt like he'd slept at all; now he was late, possibly down his only guide, and still exhausted to boot, and at this rate, Martin wished he'd never laid down and tried to sleep at all.

"You were sleeping so heavily, we didn't want to wake you," Sigva explained, with a lilt of apology to her voice.

"It's alright." It wasn't, really, but Martin didn't blame her for it. Or Gerdur and Hod, either - they were being gracious enough to let him into their home, giving him spare clothes and keeping him fed, and he certainly didn't expect them to babysit him the entire time on top of it all.

Martin pulled old mage's robes over the thin linen shirt, wrapping himself up in the worn blue fabric and fastening it around him - Lucan hadn't been able to spare much, but once he knew of Martin and Ven's plights he'd at least been willing to give them garb better suited for travelling in. Though the robes were in one piece, patched anywhere there were holes to speak of, the magic that had been loomed into their fabric was weak at best and did little for his own natural magicka stores - clear hand-me-downs, and Martin suspected they wouldn't have cost him much even if he'd had the two Septims to rub together and spend on them in the first place. But he wasn't in a position to complain. And he _wasn't_ complaining, not really - he was thankful, truly, knowing full well there was almost certainly not going to be any charity at all outside of Riverwood's walls. He was lucky enough to have received everything he had the last few days since waking up in Skyrim in the first place.

"You won't be back in Riverwood for a while, will you, dear?" Sigva asked quietly, watching him scramble to pull all his things together. Martin's brow furrowed and he remained silent for a long while; they hadn't known each other long, but she'd given him so much in the time that they had, and he loathed to leave her alone like this after everything that had happened - everything she had lost already. But he couldn't afford to stick around and wait much longer, either - whether he was worried about missing his window to solve this whole mess, or he simply feared the languor of idleness would only drive him horker shit mad, he couldn't say.

"Gerdur and Hod are good people. They'll keep you taken care of," Martin replied finally. "And if no one can find Brami's next of kin, he'll need someone to take care of him, too. You won't be alone."

"Oh, I know, dear." Sigva gave him a sad smile. "I'm just going to worry about you while you're out there."

Martin nodded, gravely, with understanding. "I'll be alright," he promised somberly, although he knew it wasn't one he could guarantee he'd be keeping. "I just..."

There was no point in lying to Sigva like he did everyone else. She'd been there when he'd first woken up in a frenzy, and had been courteous enough not to broach the subject, but she wasn't stupid, either - Martin knew that she knew who he was, or at the very least, had a pretty damn good idea, and it afforded him a rare moment of honesty with her. Of being able to drop the false hope he had for finding his husband again, or making his way home, when both of those he'd left two hundred years in the past.

"I just need to find answers," he finished finally. And Sigva understood.

* * *

There was a pack of food waiting for him in the kitchen: enough to get him to Whiterun, and probably beyond, and hopefully by then he'd have enough of his bearings to be able to fend for himself. Brami hugged him too tightly before he went; the boy still hadn't spoken since everything that had happened, but he didn't need to, for Martin to understand the unspoken _"don't go."_

"I'll see you soon," he promised quietly, yet another he knew he probably couldn't keep. But it got Brami to release the vice grip on him, and let Martin lean back enough to ruffle his hair. "Be good for Sigva, and for Gerdur and Hod, okay?"

Brami nodded.

"If you do find yourself in Riverwood, you'll visit, won't you?" Sigva asked, approaching as Martin stood with something small closed in her hand.

"Of course." He felt better about having at least _one_ promise he could keep.

When Sigva held her closed fist out to him wordlessly, he put his own hand out in silence, letting her carefully fold the pendant she clutched into his palm.

"I wish I could give you more, but everything we had was back at the house. Now you keep that hidden," she warned, and when Martin unfolded his hand to get a better look at the Amulet of Talos, he understood why. "But I hope it's something to guide you on the right path in your travels."

_"Thank you."_ She was small, far shorter than him, and Martin had to lean down in order to gently scoop her into his arms and hug her close. "May Akatosh watch over you."

When at last Sigva pulled away, he found her looking up at him proudly.

"Radri and I never did get to have children," she lamented, with a fond smile on her face, "but I like to think if we'd had a son he might have turned out like you."

Martin worked his jaw to keep the bleary tears that had formed at bay, doing his best to blink them away. "Please take care of yourself, Sigva."

"Now don't let us keep you any longer, dear. Although, Gerdur and Hod wanted to see you before you left, and I know they'd be so cross if you left without stopping by the mill."

Martin nodded. "No, of course." He supposed he should say his farewells to Hadvar, if he was still in town, too. Although Martin wouldn't be surprised if he'd left early in the morning as Ven had.

"Take care of yourself, Martin."

"I will."

Too afraid to linger any longer, lest his emotions get the best of him, Martin headed quickly for the door. But as soon as he was clear of the frame, door shutting quietly behind him, he stopped.

A figure sat on the stairs of the porch like it had been waiting for him in old worn hand-me-down leathers, her wild mess of curls pulled back tight in an explosive ponytail, cutting slices idly from an apple in her hand.

"You're late," Ven announced dryly, not bothering to look back at him.

"You said you wouldn't wait." He was surprised, and honestly a little touched, and it was impossible to keep either out of his voice. Ven scoffed as she pushed herself to her feet.

"Come on. Finish whatever you need to and let's go already."

A smile pulled at the corners of Martin's mouth, but he did his best to swallow it back. "Just let me say my goodbyes and we'll be off."

* * *

At the crest of the road that wrapped through the mountains away from Riverwood, Martin paused to overlook the sprawling plains that Whiterun rested in, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the golden noontime sun high above as he looked down at the towering city.

"It's not far now," Ven assured, coming to a stop beside him. "Maybe half an hour to go at the most, I think, but we might get lucky and not have to stop for anything again. The roads are a little safer this close to the city."

Martin gave a low hum of dry acknowledgment; four wolves had managed to corner them so far, as if the rough mountain road wasn't tiresome enough to traverse without the wildlife trying to kill you. He could do without any more unwelcome surprises.

Ven took the pause to fix up her ponytail, pulling it back again tighter this time; despite her best efforts, a few loose curls still escaped their binds.

"Do you need a break?" She asked.

"I certainly could do with lunch," Martin admitted.

Finding a nearby log off the beaten stone road, Ven dropped onto it heavily and swung her pack to her feet in one smooth motion; after a moment of digging, she was passing Martin a quarter of a loaf of bread and some of the cheese Sigrid had sent them off with as he came to sit beside her.

"The Bannered Mare will have real meals for us once we can get into the city. But this ought to tide you over."

It wasn't much, but a hungry stomach hardly cared; he regretted now not staying for breakfast in full, but this would do until they could make it into the city. His mouth watered at the thought of a nice stew or hot cuts of meat and he struggled to push it from his mind and just be content with the bread and cheese in his hand.

As they sat in the peaceful silence, Martin couldn't help but find his gaze wandering up to the towering mountain in the distance, peak swallowed the clouds, taller than all the rest by far; for most of the walk so far he'd been too focused on the road ahead to pay it much mind, but now, resting at the side of the road, he could truly marvel at the behemoth of a peak. At all of the mountains surrounding them, really - Skyrim's side of the Jerall Mountains towered compared to its southern peaks in Cyrodiil, and even from nestled high in their slopes, the views from Cloud Ruler Temple had never made Martin feel as small and insignificant as he did now on the road to Whiterun, squinting up at the snow-capped peaks looming above them.

"That's the Throat of the World up there," Ven remarked when she noticed Martin staring. "Tallest in Tamriel now, I think, since the Red Year."

Martin nodded sagely like he knew what the Red Year was more than having read about it once, in passing, in one of Sigva and Radri's books. He'd heard of the Throat of the World, at least; you could see it even from Cloud Ruler some days, if the weather was right. He just never imagined it would be so tall this close.

"Nothing like the mountains in Cyrodiil, huh?" Ven mused, almost idly. Martin pulled his gaze from the Throat long enough to look at her curiously as she watched the peaks, almost deep in thought.

"No," he agreed. "Do you visit Cyrodiil often?"

"Yeah. I travel a lot." There was a note of finality to her tone, like she'd realized she'd given away more than she meant to and wasn't willing to say anything more on the matter. He knew little of her, at this point - he was under the impression that she was from Hammerfell, although even that he couldn't be certain of, and he knew she'd been caught in an Imperial ambush when crossing the border illegally, but all else was a mystery. She was private - or perhaps had a past she'd rather leave buried - and for Martin's purposes, that suited him just fine. Even if his circumstances were normal, there'd be plenty he'd prefer to leave buried, too. And for now, the less they knew about each other, the better.

Finishing her last bite, Ven dusted the crumbs from her hands and pushed herself off the old log.

"C'mon. Let's not sit around longer than we have to." And without even waiting for him, Ven continued on down the road, leaving Martin scrambling to finish the last of his bread and hurry along down the cobblestone after.

* * *

"What would you have me do, then? Nothing?" A Nord's voice, tight with swelling anger and frustration, echoed across the looming great hall of Dragonsreach, clear as day even as Martin and Ven made their way up the short set of stairs clear on the other side of it. The residents of the hall didn't seem to pay them mind - nor any of the argument between the Jarl and the man standing by his throne, really - until they'd nearly reached the end of the table at the center of the hall and a Dunmer moved swiftly to intercept them.

" _Excuse me,_ " she said sharply, "But the Jarl is not accepting visitors at the moment. Whatever the meaning of this interruption is-"

Beside him, Ven bristled, already thin patience running thinner, and Martin quickly moved to intervene before she could say something they'd both regret.

"I apologize," Martin cut in, kindly as he could, although the interruption made the Dunmer fume. "I am Brother Martin, and this is my companion, Ven. We come from Helgen with new of the dragon attack."

Though she still eyed them warily, the woman's shoulders settled. "I see. That would explain why the guards let you in. Come." She beckoned sharply and turned on her heel, leading them towards the throne at the head of the room. "The Jarl will want to hear about this."

The Nord's attention pulled away from his heated debate as soon as he caught sight of the Dunmer and the two behind her approaching.

"Who's this, then? Irileth?"

"I apologize for the interruption, my lord. But these two have just come from Helgen."

"Helgen," the Jarl echoed, breathy, as his eyes widened. "Survivors of the dragon attack?"

"Yes, my lord," Martin replied, giving his head a brief, humble bow.

"And how much did you see?"

"All of it. There was an execution being staged for Ulfric Stormcloak when the dragon attacked - both of us were in attendance." He'd say nothing of what side Ven was attending on. Beside him, from the corner of his eye, he could see her shoot him a quick, thankful glance, one that seemingly went unnoticed by the others.

Balgruuf huffed out an irate laugh. "Of course Ulfric would be mixed up in all this."

"The people of Riverwood took us in after the attack - they're the ones who sent us," Ven explained. "After what happened with Helgen, Riverwood could be next. They need more men."

"They're right, my lord," Irileth concurred, "Riverwood is in the most immediate danger, if that dragon is still lurking in the mountains."

"Yes, I agree." Balgruuf rubbed his beard pensively. "I don't imagine anyone managed to bring the beast down."

"If they did, we were gone well before it happened," Martin replied gravely. "Given no other survivors arrived after us - at least, not before we left this morning - I would think the situation remains quite grave."

"My lord, the Jarl of Falkreath will view this as a provocation for sure," the Imperial steward at Balgruuf's side pitched in nervously. "He'll think we've joined Ulfric's side and are preparing to attack. We should not-"

"Enough." The Jarl held up a hand sharply, cutting off any further protests. "I won't sit idly by while a dragon massacres my people! Irileth, put out the orders for a detachment to Riverwood."

"At once, my lord."

The Imperial flustered and seethed all at once. "If you'll excuse me, I'll return to my duties."

"That would be best," Balgruuf replied dryly. His attention returned to the two travellers left in his company. "The two of you have done Whiterun a great service, seeking me out. I'll see to it that you're compensated for your efforts."

It wasn't really their idea, Martin thought shamefully, and even if it had been it would have been the least he could do, but his empty pockets made it difficult to protest any kind of reward. If he wanted to get much further after Ven left him in Riften, he reminded himself, he'd need more than a few days' worth of rations, old hand-me-down robes, and a dagger that could barely dispatch a skeever. And beside him, Ven certainly wasn't complaining about the reward, either.

"There is another thing you could do for me," Balgruuf continued. "There's been a real shortage of suitable mercenaries and adventurers with the war ongoing, so hopefully you'll have the skillsets I require."

He began to stand, but Ven shook her head uneasily.

"All due respect, Jarl Balgruuf, but I really only came to deliver the news from Helgen."

"Are you sure?" He was already headed for a wing off the side of the palace's great hall, beckoning them to follow. "There would be good money in it, and there's not exactly a great abundance of folks with first-hand experience with dragon attacks."

Martin looked to Ven, watching the conflict set in at the promise of coin. When she glanced to him in turn, almost like she was expecting him to have the answer, Martin could only shrug.

"How much _good money_ are we talking here?" She asked finally, the two of them stepping quickly to catch up.

"That I'll leave up to my Court Wizard. Farengar has been looking into a matter related to these dragons, and... _rumors_ of dragons. He could use an extra pair of hands right now. Or two."

The Nord mage that stood hunched over papers and books scattered across a table scarcely even noticed when the three of them crossed over the threshold into his lab. Martin watched as he muttered to himself, thumbing through pages of an open book, and the priest wondered when the last time he slept was. This must have been how he had looked to any outsider, he mused idly, pouring over the Mysterium Xarxes day and night.

"Farengar, I think I've found some folks here who might be able to help with your dragon project."

That piqued the mage's interest - his eyes shone with curiosity as his head snapped up, looking the two of them over with great intrigue and scrutiny.

"Yes, I have been looking for someone to run out and fetch something for me."

"An errand," Ven observed dryly.

"Well - when I say _fetch,_ I really mean delve into a dangerous ruin and find an ancient stone tablet that may or may not be there. If that's what you consider an _'errand.'_ "

" _Ahh._ "

"The two of you should speak with one of my housecarls before you leave the hall - I'll have them compensate you for the trip from Riverwood," the Jarl announced, bidding his farewells and leaving the three alone in the study.

"What sort of tablet are we retrieving?" Martin asked.

"I, ah, learned of a certain stone tablet said to be housed in Bleak Falls Barrow called the Dragonstone - supposedly a map of dragon burial sites all across Skyrim," Farengar explained. "When rumors first began to circulate of the dragons, most dismissed them as fantasy - but an intellectual knows better than to dismiss anything outside his realm of experience as an impossibility. That's what lead me to look into the history of the dragons - where they went, what happened to them all those years ago when they disappeared. Where they could be coming from now."

Martin's brows furrowed. "You think they could be coming back from the dead...?"

"I want to have all the information that's available, is all that I'm saying."

"And how much is that information worth to you?" Ven asked bluntly. Martin struggled to bite back a groan.

"Ven..."

Farengar took the question in stride, though, smiling wryly. "No, a fair question - I would never expect any errand be run for free, certainly not one as dangerous as this. There are a few hundred septims in it for you from our coffers, at least - and old Nord tombs are notoriously filled with treasures and artifacts of great value, which you're free to keep if you can find it."

Despite her Riften errand - whatever it was - the promise of payment seemed to be enough. "Sounds like a deal to me. Martin?"

"I'd be happy to help."

" _Excellent._ " Farengar clasped his hands together. "Bleak Falls Barrow isn't far - you can even see it from the steps of Dragonsreach, if you look south into the Jerall Mountains, although the best way to access it is from Riverwood."

Back the way they came, it seemed. Martin looked over to Ven. "There are still a few hours of daylight left, at least - would you prefer to leave in the morning, or overnight in Riverwood?"

Ven sucked her teeth pensively, still looking forward in concentration. "At least we know there's free board waiting for us in Riverwood," she decided aloud at last. "Let's get back there before the sun sets."

"I'll be here awaiting your return, then."

As Farengar bid them farewell, all that was left was to find one of the housecarls of the palace - Irileth was still missing when they exited the lab, but a sturdy looking Nord woman taller than both of them by half a head at least spotted them before long.

"You two must be the travellers from Helgen," she greeted, a small pouch of coins in her hand. Ven must have looked like the leader between them, as she handed the septims over to her. "The Jarl has asked me to extend his thanks once again for your service to Whiterun."

"Of course," Ven replied, giving a courteous nod that the housecarl returned before taking her leave.

She waited till they were over the threshold and into the cool evening air, descending the steps of Dragonsreach to pick over the sack of coins and count them silently as they went. "Fifty septims," she announced finally, and then scoffed out a sour laugh now that they were out of earshot of anyone in the palace who might be offended with her lack of gratitude.

It wasn't much - probably nothing more than food and board for handful of nights, if they couldn't just find that for free back in Riverwood. Martin eyed the quiver at her back, half-empty with just the mismatched assortment of arrows she'd managed to salvage in all the chaos at Helgen. The bow tucked inside it had seen better days, too - she'd already repaired it once, haphazardly, to tide her over till she could get her hands on something that wasn't grabbed in a panic from the rubble of a dragon attack. "Let's go in and barter with Lucan in the morning, see if we can't get you some better equipment."

She looked over at him, eyebrow raised, corner of her mouth quirked up as she looked pointedly at the dagger strapped to Martin's hip. "Maybe we can find you something sharper than a butter knife, too."

Martin couldn't help but laugh.


	5. honor among thieves

In the light of the morning sun, Ven narrowly sidestepped an oncoming child barreling down the cobblestone road of Riverwood, and then the second that came chasing after and shouting indistinctly about whatever game they'd made up for the morning.

"Oh, to be young again," Ven mused facetiously. "Wish _I_ didn't have to worry about dragons or court wizards or dusty old barrows."

Martin snorted out a laugh.

At the door to the Riverwood Trader, both of them paused at the muffled and indistinct sound of raised voices arguing. Martin shot a brief glance at Ven - when the moment of hesitation passed, she just gave him an indifferent shrug and pushed the door open.

"Well _one of us_ has to do something!"

"And it's _not_ going to be you!" Lucan snapped across the counter at the woman in the middle of the shop with her arms folded across her chest - his sister, if Martin recalled correctly - seemingly unaware of the two standing in his doorway. "We're done talking about this."

"And what are _you_ going to do then, hmm? Let's hear it!"

"I said _no,_ Camilla!" By now Lucan was almost shouting. "No adventures, no theatrics, no thief chasing, and that's _final!_ "

Camilla's eyes flickered rightward, attention caught by Martin and Ven in the doorway, and pointedly she cleared her throat. Lucan seemed to take the hint, following her gaze - he flustered immediately.

"Oh, uh - I'm so sorry the two of you had to see that." He cleared his throat nervously. "Didn't think I'd be seeing you back in town so soon."

"We're running an errand for Whiterun's court wizard," Martin replied, deciding to ignore whatever they'd just walked in on for Lucan's sake as he and Ven approached the counter.

"Oh, Farengar, huh? He's a strange one, alright."

"Well, if the gig pays well," Ven drawled dryly. In one swift motion she removed the beaten old bow from across her torso and placed it on the counter. "How much for this?"

Lucan barked out a laugh - still, he picked up the old bow and turned it over in his hands, inspecting how badly damaged it was. Martin wondered if it was even salvageable.

"I'll give you a ten septim credit for anything in the shop. But I'm not paying gold for it."

Ven worked her jaw, but conceded anyways. "That's fine. Show me the bows you have in stock."

There were only a few of them for Lucan to pull down off his weapons racks, simple things mostly made for local hunters and not really anyone who fancied themselves any kind of adventurer, but Ven looked over each of them with equal and keen interest none the less, deft fingers tracing the wood and inspecting the string in deep concentration as Martin stood patiently to the side, eyeing the swords hung up on the racks behind the counter.

"Is there any chance I could look at one of those iron swords?" He asked, pointing to them. Lucan nodded.

"Of course." Lucan brought one down, laying it gently in Martin's open palms, watching as the priest inspected it intently. It was as good a blade as iron could be - which was to say, not very good at all - but Martin had the sneaking suspicion that the steel, or anything finer, was going to be _far_ too out of their budget for now, even _if_ they weren't upgrading Ven's own supplies.

It hadn't escaped his notice that Camilla had lingered behind them, arms still folded across her chest as she hovered restlessly by the hearth; almost as if she was waiting for the chance to say something, but the words never came. After a long stretch of silence, he heard her take a deep breath like she was going to speak, but a pointed look from Lucan over Ven's shoulder stopped her short.

"What sort of errand are you running, anyways?" Lucan asked instead, as if to fill the silence.

"Farengar needs something from Bleak Falls Barrow," Martin replied. "Do you know the best way to get up there?"

"You hear that, Lucan?" Camilla chimed in finally, a smug note to her voice. "They're headed up to Bleak Falls Barrow."

Lucan groaned.

"What's at Bleak Falls Barrow?" Ven asked warily, eyes flicking up briefly from the bows.

"Well, we had, erm... a bit of a break-in," he floundered. "Still have plenty to sell! The robbers were only after one thing. An ornament of sorts, solid gold in the shape of a dragon's claw."

"And they're up at the barrow?"

"To the best of my knowledge. I'd go get it back myself, but I haven't got the time nor the skill to go galavanting into an old Nordic ruin filled with Divines-know-what."

"I _told_ Lucan I could do it," Camilla insisted, although Martin wasn't so sure she had the skill, and judging by the look Ven shared with him, she seemed to think the same.

"And _I_ told you, you'd be killed," Lucan snapped. "Camilla, I'm not- I won't lose you over something as stupid as this, do you hear me?"

"It isn't _stupid,_ " Camilla insisted quietly from behind them, but argued no further.

To Martin's surprise, it was Ven that spoke up before he could. "How much is the claw worth to you?"

Lucan blinked in surprise. "I- well, I just got a fair deal of coin in from my last shipment. If you could manage to get it back, I'd say... four hundred septims, easily."

"Three hundred _each,_ " Ven countered, jerking her head in a pointed nod at Martin.

Lucan worked his jaw in frustration, but nevertheless he relented. "Three hundred each," he repeated in agreement. The corners of Ven's mouth twitched up in wry satisfaction.

* * *

"The _least_ he could have done was mention the giant spiders," Ven growled, a boot planted firmly on the corpse of a massive spider giving her the leverage she needed to yank out the arrow firmly embedded in its head, seemingly unbothered by the gore that splattered on her boots as she did so. Martin wasn't sure sure Lucan could be blamed, though - save for the bandits, the crypt looked untouched by human hands for decades at least, more likely centuries. _No one_ knew what they were getting sent into, least of all the humble shopkeeper from the valley below that sent them into it.

"Thank the Eight for you two," the Dunmer strung up in the spider's web breathed. "Now cut me down before anything else shows up, please!"

Martin's hand went to the knife on his hip without question, taking a step forward to free the man. Ven, however, stood idle, cleaning her retrieved arrows, and her voice stopping Martin in his tracks before he could get too close.

"You're one of the thieves that stole the golden claw," she observed pointedly, giving him a sharp look from the corner of her eye. "Aren't you?"

"What?" The Dunmer's relief at being saved was gone in a flash; his face fell. "I- did that damn shopkeeper send you?"

"What did you expect, exactly? That he _wouldn't_ catch on and find a way to catch up to you eventually?"

"No, of course not! He's just some-" The words died off, frustrated, in the thief's throat, the vexation getting the better of him, and he huffed and tried again. "Alright, sure, so we took the claw, but it's not like we stole anything else! It was just _sitting there,_ he had no idea what sort of wealth he was just- just _squandering_ like it was some sort of trinket! We didn't even hurt the man's bottom line! Listen, listen, just- if you just get me out of here before something else can come along, I'll show you how it works, alright? And we can all split what's in the Hall of Stories evenly. Just get me down from here!"

"Hmm." Judging from the sound of it, Ven wasn't exactly taken with his story. Martin frowned.

"You aren't seriously considering leaving him up there."

"No, of course not, he's blocking the only path into the rest of the temple."

" _Ven._ "

She shot him a harried scowl, and let her expression darken further as she turned it on the thief.

"Give us the claw first, and maybe then we'll decide what to do with you."

Martin groaned. "That's enough. I'm cutting him down." Knife already in hand, he stormed the rest of the distance to the webs, setting to cutting through the restraints before Ven could protest.

"Sweet breath of Arkay," the thief breathed, laughing shakily, " _thank you._ "

"He's just going to run off with it once he's free!"

"N-no ma'am, I'd never do that, on my honor-"

She cut him off with a sour laugh, eyes narrowing. "What _honor?_ "

" _Enough,_ " Martin repeated sternly. The restraints were coming loose already, although he had to be careful to keep his hands from getting caught and tangled up in the sticky mess, too. Just a few more good cuts at the worst of the web here and there-

As soon as the thief was able to break himself free, he did, ripping from the web - there was a sudden flash of fire and before Martin knew what was happening he was crashing backwards to the ground, knife clattering far out of reach and his front searing with pain, keenly but distantly aware of the thief taking off like a shot down the halls of the tomb.

Behind him, Ven swore.

"Are you _happy?_ " She was grabbing him by the arm and pulling him upright before he knew what was happening, Martin swaying as he tried to steady himself and assess the damages.

" _Yes,_ " he groaned stubbornly. The smell of smoke hit his nose then as he inspected the singed front of his robes, his chest seizing up at the unwelcome and too-familiar stench. But it seemed that he'd been lucky - the sudden burst of heat stung, but hadn't managed to blister or burn away skin, and his robes might have been worse for wear but they were intact and functional, still humming faintly with their weak enchantments. The flash had shocked him more than anything else. Things could have been much worse.

Flexing his hand, he brought the golden glow of a healing spell to his fingertips, soothing over the sting and ignoring the ache of disuse in his casting hand - better every time, he noted, but still a far cry from how natural and familiar it should have felt.

Ven was still at his side, he realized.

"Aren't you going to go after him?" This time Martin had no help as he ungracefully pulled himself to his feet, haphazardly knocking the centuries-old dust and dirt of the barrow floor off his robes. Her bow was already nocked as she stood, sharp gaze fixed on the hallway the thief had disappeared down.

"I'm not stupid enough to go down there alone." Without looking down at it, she kicked his dagger towards him, the blade clattering to a stop at his feet. "Get your shit. Let's go."

His robes were going to be due for a good wash after all this, anyways - there was no harm in wiping the last of the spiderwebs that still clung to the steel of the blade off on their front, he decided.

Already a few steps ahead, before she could get too far, Ven stopped again, and looked back to Martin over her shoulder. "Look, just- a word of advice? There _is_ no such thing as honor among thieves. I'm not bailing you out next time you fall for something like that - I'm not going to _be_ there to bail you out next time, once we get to Riften, so just... learn that quick if you want to last long up here."

Martin scowled - there were any number of things he'd have liked to say about that, but the words never came, not with the matter of fact way she said it that left little room for argument, and not when she disappeared through the doorway deeper into the barrow before he could get a word in edge-wise.

If they weren't going to stick together past Riften, he decided to himself, then so be it. She could keep her cynicism and he'd hold his tongue about it - there was no use arguing about it with someone who was only going to ditch him before long anyways. Huffing, Martin slid the dagger back into its sheath and reached for the sword on his other hip instead, and delved after her into the rest of the temple.

* * *

It wasn't far into the winding, crumbling corridors that a bloodcurdling scream echoed through the stone halls and Ven put a hand up in a motion for Martin behind her to stop, as if he was going to keep charging blindly into the rest of the barrow after that.

"On your guard," she whispered. "Hopefully that was just another trap taking care of him for us."

Martin nodded, casting Oakflesh over himself and shifting his sword defensively in his hand; he wasn't quite so sure they'd be that lucky, but hope springs eternal, he supposed.

Slower now they pushed through the halls of the barrow, Ven seeming to melt into the shadows; she lead steadily, and Martin followed close behind, trying to match each step in turn and move as silently as she did, which was still a feat in and of itself even in light robes and simple boots that barely ruffled as he moved.

The deeper they got, the more clearly he could begin to make out the sound of footsteps echoing through the temple - but they were shambling, and staggered, and more concerningly, many, and it was quickly becoming apparent that they did not belong to the thief. Ven seemed to be just as quick on the uptake as she carefully drew an arrow from her back and nocked it.

The corridor took one last turn, and at its end spilled open into a room big as any of the others in the barrow, but into the view of the door shambled something that, if it had once been a man, was decidedly very much _not_ anymore.

Beside him, Ven's breath hitched uncomfortably, and Martin's heart stuttered in her brief moment of hesitation, frozen in place before she managed to snap herself out of it and raise the bow to drive one deadly arrow through its skull. Its body dropped like a rock, crumpling into a heap on the ground, and deeper into the chamber a snarl echoed out, and Ven swore, nocking another arrow.

Martin was quicker to react this time, summoning as far away from himself as he could manage a Flame Atronach to place between them and the two shambling things that were emerging through the passageway - now, though, aware of the two's presence and thoroughly pissed, with their weapons drawn that quick gait seemed a lot less shambling and a lot more charging.

The first of the remaining two took an arrow to the chest and a hot fireball from the Atronach before it dropped, but the second barely staggered backwards at the arrow that found its skull before charging forward again, closing too much distance while they were distracted with the other. _Must not be a lot rattling around up there,_ Martin mused sourly.

When he realized that it had gotten too close for the Atronach to take aim without risking either his hide or Ven's, and that even as she wheeled backwards and scrambled to nock another arrow in time it would only be a few steps more before it was within range to bring its axe down on her, Martin grit his teeth and threw caution to the wind - pushing off as hard as he could, blade shifted in his hand, Martin threw himself between them and drove the sword hard into its abdomen, driving it deep with all of his weight and praying that would be enough to take it down, or at the very least stagger it enough for him to get back _out_ of range, failing that. The thing stumbled backwards with a sickening grunt, battleaxe clattering to the stony floor, and as Martin gave the blade a rough twist, he could feel its heavy frame begin to sag and, finally, collapse.

Heart hammering in his chest, Martin gave the body one good rough shove away from him and let it crumple lifelessly onto the barrow floor, and he wasn't sure whether he should be sickened or relieved when his sword came away dry.

"I- thanks." Behind him, Ven slowly returned the arrow to her quiver, and when he looked back to her, Martin found he couldn't quite read her expression, outside of generally shell-shocked.

When she was certain one of them wasn't going to jump back to life or reach out and grab her ankles, Ven crossed the corridor to yank the arrows out of the second one she'd taken out, turning its corpse over with her boot and inspecting it with a disgusted sneer.

" _Gods above,_ but are they ugly."

"They're draugr, I think," Martin concluded aloud, resheathing his sword and sidling up to join her once he felt he could be reasonably sure there weren't any more of the things at least in the _immediate_ area. He knew of them in passing, from Ancient Nord legends and books on Skyrim's history and culture - truth be told, they were much more pleasant to look at than the more actively rotting zombies that had infested Cyrodiil's ruins in his youth, although he wasn't sure if those were still a problem now and he hesitated to mention them lest he accidentally date himself. But at least these mummified ones smelled better, too.

"Whatever they are, it'd be too soon if I never have to see another one of the damned things."

"I'm surprised you haven't seen one before," he remarked, "given how much you seem to have travelled to Skyrim before."

"I move goods for people _after_ they've been taken out of these godsforsaken ruins," Ven replied. She faltered for a moment, suddenly realizing she'd said too much, and angrily turned away. "Grab whatever you want off their corpses and let's just find that bastard of a thief. Or whatever's left of him."

_Ahh_. A smuggler, then, or at least, something like it. She didn't seem the courier type, anyways. Maybe it would explain why she'd been arrested and had been on her way to the executioner's block that first fateful encounter. Wordlessly he agreed to say nothing more on the matter, and since profaning the dead any more than he already had wasn't exactly high on his priority list, Martin only mouthed a silent apology and a prayer to Akatosh before dismissing the Atronach and hurrying to catch up as Ven pushed deeper into the ruins.


	6. ancient stones

There was something very foreboding and final about the looming door, carved and intricate, that stood between them and, presumably, the end of that godsforsaken ruin. The kind of crowning gravity that told them that the barrow wasn't quite done with them yet.

"I think whatever's on the other side of this thing, there's no turning back from it," Ven concluded gravely, running her fingers over the carved out symbols whose meanings Martin could only guess now.

"It will be nice to finally be out of here, though," he replied.

As if neither of them was willing to jinx that any more than he might just have, silence settled in between them.

The plate in the middle of the door was clearly carved out for the golden claw, which slotted in perfectly even worn with age and let it twist like a key into a lock, but doing so didn't actually _do_ anything. Even when Martin moved the wheels around it, letting them grind into place from one small carved animal to the next, the door stood stalwart, unmoving. At least getting this one wrong didn't unleash a rain of arrows onto them or impale them on a fence of spikes, anyways.

"It's got to be like that lever puzzle," Ven muttered distractedly, turning from the door and pacing the long, wide hallway back into the barrow that stretched away from it. Carved murals spanned every wall of the hallway, but Martin hadn't recalled seeing anything on them that stood out the same way the symbols above the lever at the beginning of the barrow had. If it was something more subtle than that, they could be there for a while.

The longer Ven took, and the more staring at the door yielded nothing new, Martin, frustration and impatience settling in, furrowed his brows and fished out the dead thief's journal from his pack. He'd read through it once already - further back in the barrow, though, without any context of what they might be up against, none of it really _meant_ anything. Hopefully a second glance would give him _something._

"Anything?" He called idly, flipping through the pages with a frown.

"A whole lot of symbolism that I don't understand," she replied, voice tight. Martin hummed dryly in empathetic reply. "Try that journal again, see if it says anything we missed."

"Already a step ahead of you there." But as Martin flipped through the pages, he found himself hitting the end again quicker than he'd have liked. "It barely even talks about the claw, other than in vague terms and old riddles. I'm not sure he knew what he was going to do with it when he got here himself. _'When you have the golden claw, the solution is in the...'_ " He let his voice peter out as he read the rest of it again to himself, realization dawning. Maybe that was something. A glance at the palm of the claw in his other hand, and back up to the door, told him everything he needed to know.

"Come here, actually."

"You find something after all?"

Martin slipped the journal back into his pack and waited till Ven had rejoined him to hand her the claw.

"Read me the order of the symbols on the palm of the claw."

" _Ahh._ " She flipped the claw over in her hand. "The first is the bear."

With a bit of effort, Martin pushed the topmost wheel into place, following suit with the other two after - second the dragonfly, third the owl.

"If you'd do the honors." He stepped back and gestured back at the large plate at the center of it all, and fitting the claw into its keyhole, Ven gave it another hopeful twist.

This time, the entire mechanism gave way, heavy stone of the door grinding as it sunk slowly and gave way into a dark and dusty stairway leading deeper into only the Gods knew what.

"Not bad after all," Ven remarked, sounding genuinely impressed with him for perhaps the first time as she passed back the claw.

"I'm just impressed that door actually still worked." From the looks of it, it was unlikely it had been opened since it was first put into place, a remarkable product of a long-gone people. It took a bit of distracted fumbling to tuck the claw away again as Martin followed, Ven already ahead of him and mounting the stone staircase carefully.

The cavern that awaited at the top of the stairs and at the end of that final hallway was taller and more sprawling than any other part of the barrow yet, light from the surface spilling in at its end and filtering through centuries' worth of dust, illuminating the cavern in a cool light a stark contrast from the warm glow of torches and braziers that both of them had gotten used to.

Martin tapped Ven's arm and gestured wordlessly at the coffins that dappled the edges of the cave on the way to its end, easy to miss with everything so spacious and spread apart. With a nod, she quietly hoisted her bow off her shoulder, stringing an arrow into it without a sound. But the closer they got to each of them, the lids cast to the side made it clear each was empty. Still, neither was willing to let their guard down.

And then, faintly, over the shifting of stone and howling of the wind through the cave, as they moved slowly forward, a rhythmic sound began to play out, like the sound of drumming far away, and Martin's brows furrowed.

"Do you... hear that?" Ven spoke before he could, the question distant and distracted as she seemingly struggled to make sense of what she was hearing. It was faint, still, but Martin didn't have to strain to hear it, clearer the closer they got to the end of the cavern with each careful step - in fact, as they drew nearer, he realized what he'd thought was the pounding of drums was rather a chorus of voices, deep and chanting, their tongue entirely unfamiliar but resonating with something deep in him all the same. Tugging at him.

"Yes," Martin replied slowly, cautiously. The hand that had been sitting on the hilt of his sword drew it now, the other casting Oakflesh over himself. But for as much as the strangeness of it all had him on edge, defensive, the unfamiliar chanting had a certain draw to it, a deep-seated desire to keep moving and see what he'd find on the other end of it, and that pull, slowly, winning out over caution. If there was a part of him that would have had the better sense to turn around at that revelation, the voices, louder still, drowned it out.

The platform, lit brightly from the afternoon daylight coming in from above, sat across a small stream and at the top of a small staircase. And at its top stood a monument, looming, a mural covered in carvings as intricate as anything else the ancient Nords had crafted.

"What _is_ that?" Ven breathed, but he could barely hear her over the chanting, louder than ever now. In fact, Martin was pretty sure it was coming from the stone wall itself, pulling him in still - which, now that he was nearly there, he was having a hard time keeping his eyes off it.

Words were carved into its base in a language he'd never seen before, but that resonated deeply with him, made his vision swim, that same insatiable pull settling in and making him want to run his fingers over it - before he knew it, his hand was already outstretched, feet pulling him closer, and quite suddenly, nothing else in the world mattered.

When Martin's fingertips finally connected with the stone, his vision went fully then, nothing but one of the words in that unfamiliar script lit up bright and making his head split. He imagined it was something like the sensation of being branded, the way the word _burned_ into him, practically seemed to make itself apart of him without him truly understanding it.

And all at once, as soon as the word finished digging itself deep into his mind, the wall released him, senses returning and pain fading by the second like nothing had ever happened. When even the chanting cleared from his mind, he was left, head swimming, with his palm flat over the lettering on the wall and Ven beside him with one hand pressed to the wall and the other clutching her head.

"I don't-" Ven groaned, eyes screwing shut. "I don't imagine that just happened to you, too."

"Oh, _Nine._ " What had they just gotten themselves into?

The heavy crash of a stone coffin's lid being thrown from its place - a sound both of them had learned by now to dread - tore the moment asunder, ripping their attention from the wall, and Martin wheeled around just in time to see a draugr pulling itself from a coffin both of them had failed to notice. Well, maybe they wouldn't have failed to notice it if either of them had been able to resist the thrall of _whatever_ that monument was.

Martin's hand jumped to his sword at his hip, and his stomach dropped as it connected with an empty sheath instead. No - he'd drawn his sword when they were still further back in the cavern. His eyes darted to the staircase, near where his sword glinted in the sunlight, where it must have slipped out of his hand when the pull of the wall had really taken him. Not far from it was Ven's bow, and the arrow she'd had strung up, about equal distance between them, their weapons, and the draugr.

" _Shit,_ " Ven hissed, hand shooting to the knife strapped to her thigh. It probably wouldn't do much against the draugr and its battleaxe, and Martin wasn't about to rely on the knife at his own hip, more utility than anything else. And as the draugr finally charged, he mustered up his will to dive for it, rolling ungracefully out of the way into the hard stone ground and fumbling for his sword.

" _FUS... RO DAH!_ "

Before his fingers could connect with the hilt, just three hauntingly familiar syllables from the thing's decayed jaw threw a shockwave at Martin with enough force to throw him off the platform entirely. The world spun for too long a moment before the ground finally rushed up to meet him, winding him hard as he tumbled with an agonized grunt, sword clattering with him somewhere to the dirt nearby.

He groaned, scrambling to push himself to his feet, even as his body screamed out in agony from the impact and gave out a time or two, his vision swimming. As soon as he could focus long enough to pull himself together and cast something, though, he was summoning a Flame Atronach, letting it set its sights on the draugr and hopefully pull its attention away from Ven while he scrambled to find his sword. Though, like Martin, a little worse for wear from being thrown like that, he found it glinting in the dirt only a few feet away, and with it finally back in his hands he stumbled to his feet and turned his attention back to the platform.

Flames licked the draugr's frame - Martin realized, as it loomed over Ven, that it was much bigger than he'd thought, and with the way it barely seemed to flinch at every ball of fire the Atronach sent its way, it seemed it was a lot stronger than the ones they'd gotten used to, too. In the chaos of Martin trying to regain his bearings, Ven had managed to dive after her bow, from what he could tell, but she hadn't even managed to nock an arrow yet let alone push herself off the ground and move before the draugr had managed to corner her. As it raised its axe, Martin had just long enough to agonize about how there was no way he could get to her in time and keep it from taking her head off before the dagger she'd pulled from her thigh found a home dead center in its face, flung as hard as she could with great precision. It was enough to stagger it, at least, giving her a chance to grab her bow and roll out from underneath it, but to Martin's great dismay, once it regained its bearings it hardly seemed to notice the blade sticking out of its skull.

With some distance between her and it, though, Ven was able to draw back her bow at last, and Martin took off for the staircase as she put an arrow in its chest and the Atronach got another shot off on it.

" _FUS-_ "

With Ven cornered now between it and the stone monument, the draugr puffed out its chest and made to use that great force again, but it managed no more than the first syllable before Martin struck as hard as he could with a wide slash across its back, and as it staggered forward, Ven put another arrow in its throat this time. _Now_ it was starting to look a little worse for wear.

Immediately the draugr heaved its axe in a great arc, spinning on its heel to swing at Martin, and the priest hissed as he narrowly stumbled backwards in time to dodge the blow, blade coming inches from taking off his head. When it swung again, there was no room _or_ time to move out of the way - the blade of his sword caught the blow this time, Martin straining hard to keep the axe at bay. It was another loosed arrow, Ven sinking her mark into the back of its head, that distracted the thing just long enough for Martin to push hard against the axe and, as the draugr stumbled, drive his heel into its kneecap.

It had already crashed to its knees, but another hard kick to the chest made the axe clatter to the ground. And it was Ven's sharp reflexes that kicked in then - without a moment's hesitation, she dropped her bow, dove for the battleaxe, and as it turned to face her just as she wound the blade back, in one swift swing took the draugr's head clean off.

It clattered to the ground a few feet away, bouncing down the stairs altogether and rolling off somewhere in the dirt of the cavern.

Heart hammering in his ears, Martin's whole frame sagged, his sword clattering to the ground, and he fumbled around behind him for a moment to find purchase against the table there and lean his whole weight against it - some sort of altar, he reminded himself, and he tried not to think too hard about whether using it to rest against was blasphemous or not. Ven stumbled backwards and found reprieve leaning against the coffin itself, letting her head loll back, breathing heavy.

" _Fuckin' Eight,_ " she hissed, body heavy with exhaustion. 

The rush of adrenaline that had kept him moving before was starting to wear off now, and the scream of agony through his whole frame at being thrown hard off the side of the platform was starting to set in then; Martin winced as he shifted to adjust himself against the altar a little more comfortably, every little movement excrutiating. He didn't even feel the ache in his hand this time when he cast the soft golden glow of a healing spell over himself, letting it soothe out the worst of it slowly till it was no more than a dull nuisance, although he couldn't be sure if that was because the pain in his body vastly outshone the struggle to cast that still persisted.

When there was no more his own magic could do for him, Martin let his hand drop, heart in his chest still pounding wildly and struggling to come back down to normal, and stillness settled in between the two of them, nothing but their heaving, ragged breaths and the shifting of the cave around them to fill the silence. And when the shock of it all began to settle, despite himself, Martin began to laugh. Quiet, in the beginning, small and shell-shocked, Ven giving only a stunned giggle in reply at first, but before either of them knew it they had burst out into full, raucous laughter at the sheer absurdity of it all.

"What if we had died?" Ven managed after a long while, still through short-breathed laughter like her rhetorical question wasn't grave and harrowing in reality. "All that, and what if that had been what did us in?"

"Oh, Nines." Martin covered his face, shoulders still shaking, till eventually he'd composed himself enough to pull away and wipe his eyes. When the laughter between the two of them had died down the grave reality of the near mortal peril of it all began to settle back in again, but it was a lot easier to ignore this time. They _hadn't_ died, not yet, and that was all that mattered for now.

But the other great mammoth in the room now, so to speak, was becoming harder to ignore as Martin stared directly at it, Ven following his gaze to the mysterious stone monument that now lay dormant.

"I didn't imagine it, did I?" Ven asked quietly, not really a question but a somber confirmation. "The chanting, the- glowing word, whatever the hell any of that was - it wasn't just me."

"No," Martin replied solemnly.

"And I don't imagine you know what that thing _is._ " But there was a note of hope to her voice all the same, hope Martin hated to take away.

"No," he replied again, "I'm afraid I don't."

Ven sighed, looking away from it at last. "Yeah, alright." She pushed herself off from the coffin, beginning the process of gathering her bow back up and salvaging whatever she could from the wreckage of the aftermath. "The way the last few days have gone, this might as well happen. Fuck it."

Martin sighed, too, taking one last moment of reprieve before he had to get up again and compose himself.

"That big thing had better not be the Dragonstone," Ven remarked sourly as she yanked an arrow from the draugr's headless corpse. "Because I don't have anything to take some kind of a rubbing with and Farengar's shitting himself if he thinks we're going to manage to lug _that_ thing back."

Martin barked out a laugh. "No, it's not particularly portable," he replied lightly. As he pushed off from the altar at last, looking around the chaotic scene around him, his eyes settled on something still sitting in the coffin itself. Approaching carefully to get a better look at it, his eyes brightened as he pulled the stone tablet from inside. "Ahh- actually, I think we're in luck."

Ven glanced back at him, pausing her work and leaving one of the arrows forgotten for now in the draugr's chest as she joined him to look it over.

The same sort of script from the mural was inscribed on the back of the tablet - not the same text exactly, he quickly observed, a few flitting glances back and forth making that plainly obvious. Though it didn't have the same thrall as the mural before, there was still something naggingly familiar - deeply so, beyond recognizing it from moments before, but in what way he couldn't say, just ran his fingers over the text in idle thought.

"Farengar said it should be a map," Ven pointed out. Martin turned the tablet over, and lo and behold, carved into its stony surface was what Martin was fairly certain was an approximation of Skyrim - and into the map's face, marks scattered across the land. Without being able to read the script, there was no way to know for sure, he supposed, but it seemed Farengar was right about the tablet after all.

"Where are we now?" Martin asked. "On this map, I mean."

"Umm..." Ven took it gently from him to get a better look, tracing her fingers over the carved lines of a map that must have been several millennia old at that point. Finally, she settled one finger somewhere in the mountains of the south, fairly squarely in the middle. "About here I think."

Martin hummed lowly. He wasn't sure what he thought knowing would tell him, and he simply looked the map over for a long moment, trying to work out what he knew was where and trying to quell his uneasy nerves at the sheer number of burial sites scattered across the map's face. Nines above, did he hope Farengar was wrong about this.

* * *

The evening sky had just begun to glow soft yellows and pinks by the time they found their way out of the barrow, onto the high cliff ledge on the mountainside that the end of the ruin opened up onto.

"We'll probably be able to make it back to Riverwood before the sun sets," Ven observed aloud, looking out over the forest-mottled valley below them with her hands on her hips, "if we can find a way to get off this damn thing."

Martin peered carefully off the side of the slope, down its steep and stony face. Maybe cliff wasn't the right word - it wasn't a straight drop, an uneven smattering of boulders that formed a sort of natural system of ledges and making at least some kind of path to the ground below that didn't mean having to climb down a sheer face of rock. But the trip to the ground wasn't exactly going to be a leisurely stroll, either.

"We could always go back through the barrow," he offered. They'd spent most of the day inside, sure, but now that all the bandits and draugr had been dealt with and all the traps had been cleared, no doubt they could make it back out in less than half that. Still, it'd probably cost them a few more hours at least, and Martin wasn't sure he liked the idea of walking the winding road down the frozen peak in the dark. Or worse yet, having to spend the night there.

Ven gave a dissatisfied hum, sounding about as fond of that idea as Martin. "Maybe if climbing down this thing seems like more trouble than it's worth."

He opened his mouth to reply, but quickly snapped it shut - a distinctive roar echoed through the valley, distant but more than enough to make his blood run cold.

That unmistakable look of horror fell across Ven's face, too, as they looked to each other with great dread. So he hadn't been imagining things like he'd hoped.

"Do you think it's the one from Helgen?" She asked quietly, voice tense. None of them knew what had happened to Helgen's assailant after all, and the Jarl's housecarl had raised an excellent point about the danger if it really was still lurking in the mountains.

"I don't know what's worse," Martin replied gravely, "that, or the alternative." He didn't like to think about the implications of there being more than one dragon in the region. More than one dragon in Skyrim _in general,_ when their kind should have died out centuries before even _he_ was born.

Another roar echoed through the valley. Nearer this time, Martin thought, though he hoped it was just his nerves playing tricks on him.

"Gods, it's close," Ven breathed. "Come on, let's just-"

The heavy beating of wings alone would have been enough to drown her out and cut her off, but all at once, under the force of a terrible gust of wind from above, Martin staggered, scrambling to find his footing and a hand reaching out instinctively to grab Ven when she stumbled a little too close to the edge. The dragon swept so close in its descent into the valley that Martin flinched, heart hammering.

" _Shit._ " Soon as her wits were about her, Ven turned instinctively back to the cave entrance, but Martin grabbed her arm quickly before she could get too far.

"Wait."

" _Wait?!_ That's a _dragon,_ Martin, do you think we have time to _wait?_ "

"Think of how close we are to Riverwood right now," he reminded gravely. "If we backtrack through the barrow, we'll never make it back to the town in time to warn them."

Ven bristled, yanking her arm away. "I think they can see the _giant dragon_ flying around the valley just fine," she snapped. "Let them fend for their own damn selves, I'm going back in."

Anger was rare for Martin - but in that moment, with those words, it took everything he had not to blow up at her right then and there. _What's_ wrong _with you?!_ He wanted to bark back. _You'd rather let all those people die just to save your own skin?!_

But maybe she had been right, back in the barrow. Maybe there was no honor among thieves, or smugglers, or whatever exactly she was.

"Fine," he said curtly instead, reaching behind him into his pack to fish out the claw, pushing it into her hands. "If there's anything left of Riverwood by the time you get back down there, make sure Lucan gets this. Or turn it for a profit if you must, I'm sure someone would be willing to buy."

"You're serious right now?"

"Very." With as much caution as he had the luxury to take in the moment with the impending threat of the dragon circling back around - which was to say, not very much caution at all - Martin dropped down one side of the rocky outcropping to the next ledge beneath it, and then the next, till Ven had disappeared from sight and all he had to worry about was making it to the ground as unscathed as he could.

He was halfway down at best before the beast began to return; there was a fleeting hope that perhaps it hadn't seen him yet, small and unassuming against the looming mountain in the evening light, and then it opened up its maw and let loose a stream of hot flame at the ledge. Martin's grip slipped and his footing let loose beneath him, and he skid against the rough dirt and gravel that was rapidly sliding out beneath his weight, scrambling for purchase as he narrowly avoided its fire, before managing to stop himself against the side a hard boulder, grunting in pain at the impact.

Only fleetingly - and maybe bitterly - he did hope that Ven had, at least, managed to make it back inside and wasn't just roasted alive just then. But with no time to dwell on it, he returned his focus to the steep mountainside below him, scrambling down the few remaining boulders before he could throw himself to solid ground, stumbling as he caught his footing.

There wasn't much in the way of cover at the base of the mountain - trees were far and few between, but there were a few ledges and staggered boulders and rocky outcroppings he might be able to make use of, if he could get to them in the first place, and just hoped he was fast enough if he was ever caught on the wrong side of one. With that his best hope, Martin booked it.

The dragon swept low enough again for the sudden gust to make him stumble, but when the ground shook as it landed heavily behind him, Martin's footing gave out entirely as he tumbled shoulder-first down the slight slope. He _had_ to stop taking so many falls - his whole body screamed out in agony, new bruises compounding on old ones as he narrowly managed to catch himself and scramble to steady himself. The plume of flame that the beast let loose came so close that the heat of it stung his back as Martin dove just in time behind the nearest ledge, chest heaving as he took what little solace he could in what cover it provided.

Between there and Riverwood was thin forest and plenty of jagged ground that might provide some cover, but not nearly enough to disappear into fully - at this rate, Martin realized, even if he managed to survive the entire trip back, there was no chance he'd outrun it. He'd be leading it straight to Riverwood and its people instead. Sigva, Brami, Delphine, Gerdur - even if the Jarl's men had made it to the town already, Helgen was just a testament to the slim chances of survival for any of them. At least, he reasoned, if he stood his ground here, he might injure it enough to make it think twice about attacking Riverwood altogether.

Taking a deep breath, with one hand Martin cast Oakflesh over himself, settling with the hilt of his sword on the other, and steeled himself.

The ground trembled as the dragon took heavy steps to the edge of the ledge Martin had found cover beneath. But even before it had the chance to actually do anything, the clear thud of an arrow landing its mark was punctuated with an indignant snarl.

" _Hey!_ " Ven's voice cut loud and clear across the valley, ground shaking as the dragon turned to face her. Another arrow sunk into its scales. "Over here, ugly!"

With another angry growl, the dragon let loose a plume of flame; another arrow whipping through the air a few agonizing moments later told Martin that it hadn't quite hit its mark. With the dragon distracted - and with the feeling that he might have a shot at this now, after all - Martin drew his sword and summoned a Flame Atronach with the other hand, diving out from beneath the ledge.


	7. dragon rising

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is an extremely small emeto warning for this chapter, it comes up for a fraction of a sentence and is not brought up again and i'm not even sure it's enough to warrant warning for but i want to like. be safe yk

There was a soft spot in the neck of the dragon where the scales had begun to come loose after constant barrage, across what had felt like hours of stalemate with the dragon, although the distant glow of the low sun that had yet to quite sink beneath the horizon told them it couldn't possibly have been that long. The beast bellowed in anger as another arrow sunk into it, the ground shaking with the terrible beating of its wings as it pushed off from the ground again and Ven dove back under cover.

Martin pushed his back against the cover of a stony ledge, chest heaving, as with a hot plume of flame he felt the tethers of yet another Atronach come undone, and he swore under his breath as he readied to summon another one, the bounds of his natural magicka starting to reach their limits. He simply ignored the ache and the exhaustion and willed what little he had left to rise to the surface.

The ground shook again as the dragon landed on the ledge behind him mere moments after he cast - he'd given away his position. But the beast gave a low, hot growl from somewhere behind him before it could strike, audibly wincing with a frustrated snarl as the Atronach got off a fiery shot, and the dragon's attention was drawn just long enough for Martin to duck out from beneath the ledge in search of new cover.

_"Kos mulhaan!"_ The dragon barked, motion out of the corner of its eye pulling its attention away from the atronach. Martin's stomach clenched - there was too much space between he and the next boulder for him to make it if it decided to open its jaws now. But behind him, another fireball seared at its scales and from somewhere else another arrow sunk inbetween them and its attention was torn back again, the dragon roaring furiously - whether more out of frustration or pain, Martin couldn't tell as he narrowly made it behind the cover of the boulder.

Keeping its attention split was, Martin conceded gravely, the only way he'd managed to make it this long - the atronachs didn't tend to last long once the dragon set its sights on them, and he wouldn't have had the magicka to keep up with the rate it was taking them out otherwise if it had just been him. But Ven was quick on her feet and a quicker shot, and every time the beast had Martin or another atronach cornered, she was pulling its attention back again with well-aimed arrows, finding a way to duck beneath new cover before its fire could reach her and giving each atronach just a little longer before its fetters unwound - and giving Martin a little more time to recuperate and try to think up a plan better than this in the meantime.

The fact of the matter was, this wasn't working - they needed to hit it with something harder, and fast, because a slow assault of arrows and fiery blasts that seemed to merely glance off steely scales was wearing _them_ down faster than it was the beast, and they couldn't bounce from hiding place to hiding place forever. The problem was, as the dragon bellowed again and let loose another plume of flame so hot Martin could feel the waves of heat rolling off even from there, no matter how he wracked his brain he couldn't figure out _what._ If Akatosh was still listening, He wasn't answering, and there was no Amulet of Kings, no deus ex machina to bail them out now. They were running out of time, and fast.

That last blast of fire did his atronach in once more, and Martin huffed, straining again for the magicka to summon another before peering out to find the best spot to place it. The dragon was scrambling for where Ven had gotten her last shot off, searching, but she had since dived out of her last hiding spot, currently charging with all the speed she could muster for the next bit of cover. But the jagged outcropping of rocks she had her sights set on was too far away, and as the dragon turned its head to catch sight of her tiny form sprinting across the valley, Martin realized dreadfully that the atronach had not lasted long enough - she was the one using it as the bait this time, to keep the beast distracted long enough for her to move. With one hefty thrash, the dragon brought its tail swinging hard into her, colliding with Ven's torso hard enough that Martin winced as it sent her crashing to the ground.

Martin moved more or less instinctively - before he could even really think about what he was doing, he was charging out from behind the boulder and the summoning spell in his palm dissipated, magicka flooding back through his arm, and brought it back up again in the form of a lightning bolt that he launched at the beast without a moment of hesitation. Destruction was not his school of choice, but he knew enough to hold his own in a pinch, and it seemed to be enough to work - the lightning seemed to stick better than the atronachs' flames did, sizzling off the scales and lingering as the dragon visibly winced.

" _Hey!_ "

The dragon scrambled around immediately at the sound of Martin's shout, turning quickly as its unwieldy body let it, and Martin realized, now that it was thoroughly distracted again, that he hadn't actually planned on what he'd do with its attention once he had it. He'd pulled too far away to duck behind the boulder now, and with Ven still teetering and struggling to pull herself back to her feet he couldn't risk taking cover and letting its attention return to her even if he had the choice. Its jaw opened again, that flash of light in the back of its throat, and although he was almost certain it wouldn't work, in one desperate bid of panic Martin threw up the strongest ward he could muster.

It nearly knocked him off his feet to brace himself against it, but the ward held fast, hot jet of flame pushing against and wrapping around his ward almost harmlessly. Martin grit his teeth, straining hard to hold it, and just as the fire relented he released it, chest heaving, no more magicka left in him to keep up the defenses anyways.

The dragon roared in frustration and the ground shook as it beat its wings hard and took to the skies again, the force of it knocking Ven back to the ground _again,_ and Martin used the brief moment of reprieve to dash across the valley to her side.

"Are you hurt?" He asked frantically, scrambling to pull her to her feet before the dragon could start doubling back around.

"The fuck do you think?" She bit back through gritted teeth, legs nearly giving out beneath her again - _nearly,_ but not quite, and as soon as he had her standing again, leaning heavily on his own unsteady frame for support, and pausing only to fumble for her bow, they stumbled the rest of the way to the cover of a rocky ledge that was closer now without a dragon between they and it. Not a moment too soon, either, as the dragon let out another hot burst of flame, narrowly just scalding as they ducked for cover.

Martin's back hit the stony face of the ledge a little too hard and he grunted at the sharp pain of impact, but adrenaline made him forget the pain just like all the other hard aches the battle had inflicted as he struggled to catch his breath. Ven leaned her whole weight against the rock, seemingly unable to stand without it, face twisted up in agony.

"How bad is it?" He asked between ragged breaths. The dragon's tail did far more damage than he expected, it seemed. "Is it your rib again?"

Ven shook her head, prodding weakly at the place Delphine had been so focused on. "I don't think so. Doesn't exactly feel great, though." Even still, through a clenched jaw she struggled to get the words out.

Martin instinctively brought magicka to his palm in the form of a healing spell, but the golden light quickly sputtered out and died before it could even truly form - there was nothing left in him. Somewhere on the far side of the valley, the call of the dragon echoed as it circled high above - presumably regaining its bearings as much as they were - and he flexed his hand to try again, knowing they really would be out of time if it circled back around while they were both like this.

But before the shimmer of Restoration magic could even form a second time, Ven put her hand up in a motion for him to stop. And then the other hand, still clutching at her, began to glow gold. He recognized it as a weaker, more rudimentary version of a healing spell, one that took time and required proximity to the injury, but it was a healing spell nonetheless and her tight frame relaxed as the pain began to fade. He hadn't taken her for a mage, but judging by what he'd seen out of her so far, that might have been all she knew.

When the pain seemed to be markedly lessened, Ven wiped away the sweat that had formed on her brow before reaching back into her small pack and fumbling for something; what she produced was a small bottle of viscous liquid shimmering light blue that she pushed wordlessly into Martin's hands in a way that wouldn't have let him argue with her even if he wanted to.

"Where did you get this?"

"Grabbed it from the barrow," she replied distractedly, eyes fixed on the sky above. "It's the only one I've got, so make it count."

Martin scowled down at the bottle of magicka potion only for a brief moment, lamenting how many other things Ven's apparently sticky fingers might have lifted from the tomb while he'd been busy keeping so careful not to profane the dead there any more than was strictly unavoidable. But, what was done was done, after all - the moment of dismay passed quickly and he sighed, yanked the cork out with his teeth, and quickly chugged the thick potion. With age it carried a foul and sharp taste reminiscent of the worst of the alcohol he'd sampled in his wilder youth and he winced hard, biting back bile that tried to rise to the back of his throat, but it was still potent as the day it'd been made and sent a well-needed surge of magicka rushing through his veins almost as soon as it hit his stomach. He discarded the bottle carelessly somewhere in the dirt - they could think about recovering it to reuse later, when there wasn't a dragon bearing down from overhead, if they happened to still be alive - and flexed his casting hand, feeling much better now that he didn't have to strain to squeeze every last drop of magicka in him out of his palm.

The dragon swept down again like a diving bird of prey, the rushing force of wind nearly making them stumble if not for the cover of the ledge behind them, and Ven moved quickly without hesitation, raising her already-nocked bow and loosing it in one swift motion before the beast could get too far away for her to hit again. The arrow sung soundlessly through the air, and though but a speck in the distance Martin watched it tear through the more vulnerable flesh of its wings, ripping apart already frayed webbing and settling soundly into the bony digits inbetween.

The dragon began to double back around again, but something was wrong this time - its flight wobbled, suddenly seemingly uncontrolled, and Martin realized as it veered to the side and rapidly began losing altitude that its wings could no longer sustain it.

Its body swept down dangerously close in its collision course with the valley and the two of them barely had time to dive out of the way, Martin and Ven both biting into the dirt just in time to avoid the thrashing of its sharp claws and dangerous tail as it crashed. The ledge they'd been using for cover was thoroughly destroyed as the beast's body dug a deep gash into the earth, and as the pair scrambled to drag themselves out of the dirt, Martin turned back just in time to watch it crash with a gut-twisting crunch into the hard, jagged side of the mountain itself.

For a second he really thought they might be so lucky that that might be enough to do it in, but soon its body began to writhe and clamber away from the rocky mountainside with a bellow filled with such a terrible fury he'd never heard before.

_"Mal lirre!"_ It cried, still struggling to right itself as it swayed from the heavy impact.

"Martin, give me your sword," Ven called over the raving. "I need you to distract it."

He ripped his gaze away from the beast just long enough to stare at her incredulously. "You _can't_ be serious right now."

"I am, and I'm sorry. But I just need you to trust me here."

Martin bristled. She had, of course, returned in the end after all, and that was one thing, but this was still the woman who had meant to ditch him to save her own skin in the first place. Who had, in the short two days they'd been travelling together, made herself very clear that she would _not_ be sticking his neck out to save him, and that she didn't care what happened to him past Riften. Whose cynical quip of _no honor among thieves_ had seemed a warning to him about herself just as much as about the world around them. And here she was, asking him to _trust her_.

"I have a plan," she promised, "and you're the only one with magic to protect yourself here. I just- I need you to _trust me._ "

He'd ask what the plan _was,_ but there was no telling if the dragon could understand them and he wasn't exactly eager for this to be the way they found out.

There was a desperate sort of look on her face, pleading, as Ven stuck her hand out for the sword, and for every reason she had given him not to trust her, it was something about that one moment of wholehearted sincerity - something about the glint in her eyes, so wholly and uncomplicatedly genuine in a way he'd never seen them, and something that pulled deep down at that ancient part of him again - that was enough to tip the scales.

Giving her one solemn nod, Martin hefted his sword across the few feet of distance between them, Ven catching the hilt smoothly in her hand outstretched.

As soon as she had it she took off running, and Martin braced himself as the dragon lurched forward, casting Oakflesh over himself again just as his last dissipated. The beast's eyes flickered towards Ven's figure flitting from cover to cover through the thin trees and boulders nearer to the base of the mountain, and Martin quickly shot another blast of electricity its way, pulling its attention back. The potion had been a godsend, but there wasn't enough left in him to summon another atronach _and_ defend himself as necessary - he was going to have to take matters into his own hands.

Faster than he expected it to the dragon lunged, trying to close the distance between them and snap its jaws, but its great body was just ungainly enough that Martin was able to dive out of the way, trying unsuccessfully to roll smoothly to his feet and biting into the dirt instead. He stumbled unceremoniously to his feet, and then backwards as it snapped quickly at him again, nearly losing his footing. He recovered quickly, though, slinking just far enough back to stay out of the range of its teeth.

His eyes slipped to Ven momentarily, and all at once, he understood - she scrambled, his sword clutched precariously in one hand, up the rocky side of the mountain, slipping once or twice as rocks fragmented and broken loose by the collision gave way underneath her, but she managed, steadily pulling herself to the high ground above the dragon. He just needed to give her more time.

Another lightning bolt kept its attention on Martin even as he moved out of range of its bite, making it snarl irritably - he knew it was a nuisance more than an actual assailment, but it kept the dragon irritated and too focused on him to notice the woman scaling the mountainside behind it, and that was enough.

With Martin too far for it to sink its teeth into him, the dragon staggered back onto its hind legs, rearing up instead, and he watched as its jaw dropped again, and knowing what was coming, threw up another ward.

It held fast against the steady stream of flame, even as the fire pushed hard against him, but every second he held his own he could feel his magicka beginning to dwindle. Heart hammering in his ears, Martin strained against the ward as it threatened to actually shatter and break, his boots dug into the dirt, bracing himself against it. He'd just have to outlast the hot blast of fire a little longer, he told himself, just a few more seconds, and he screwed his eyes shut, praying to the Nine with everything he had - _were They even still listening?_ \- that he could hold out just a few moments more.

The force of the flame actually began to push him backwards, and he willed himself to push past his natural limits for just a little longer, gritting his teeth hard, but the end of his rope was in sight now. Finally, despite all his best efforts, the ward shattered. But the flames stung his skin, dulled by the Oakflesh still surrounding him, for only the briefest of moments before the jet of flames sputtered out with the distinct and sickening sound of metal through flesh and bone. The ground shook as its heavy head came crashing to the ground, jaws slammed shut by the earth with the weight of the woman who'd come crashing down onto it from above and pinned closed by sword she'd pushed with all of her weight into its skull. And as Ven kneeled atop it in victory, shoulders heaving, still burning with righteous fury, there was no final anguished cry of agony from the beast, only the wet gurgle of the blood of defeat in the back of its throat as the fire in the dragon's eyes sputtered out lifelessly.

Exhaustion won the battle then. Martin's knees bit the ground as his legs beneath him gave out and he stumbled forward, barely propping himself up as he scrambled to catch his breath. For a brief moment, in the quiet darkness of the blue evening that had settled in, there was only ragged breathing to cut the eerie silence, the valley around them gone still and lifeless as the dragon's corpse in the aftermath.

It was the glow of a bright golden light that cut the darkness first, and then the rushing sound of roaring flames through the silence; Martin's first instinct, as he snapped his head up, would be to say that the dragon was ablaze, but he knew that wasn't right.

He couldn't tell if it was shock or something else that kept Ven frozen in place as a familiar light surrounded the dragon's corpse and her atop it, flesh burning right off the beast's bones, but the golden glow was no fire. He knew it intimately - or something like it, anyways - even if he'd only seen it once, at its heart, on the dawn of the Fourth Era. Stomach dropping like a rock, Martin scrambled to his feet, a newfound adrenaline willing his legs not to give out beneath him, but what could he do but watch helplessly as the light flooded into his new companion, leaving the body of the dragon barren?

And then almost as suddenly as it had begun the light died. No holy Avatar of Akatosh towering over the forest, resplendent and bright and terrible, last of that light that had seemed so familiar and divine gone without a trace into Ven's body. Still on her knees, her shoulders sagged forward, but she was alive, and cognizant enough to clutch desperately at her chest, and Martin almost didn't dare to breathe as he waited for the other shoe to drop.

"Ven?" He almost wondered if she even heard him, the hand on her chest suddenly scrambling to claw at her throat, but when Martin took a tentative step forward she threw the other hand out in a frantic motion for him to stop. Quite suddenly this was all very _not_ familiar - although he supposed he wouldn't have known, exactly, what had happened in the aftermath of the last time he saw that golden light - and Martin stood shock-still, unsure of what to do as she struggled against... _something._

The hand that wasn't at her throat came up to cover her mouth, like she was straining with great effort to keep something in, a terror in her eyes like he'd never seen before, and Martin's hand nearly went instinctively to the dagger at his hip before he stopped himself. Instead, he opened his mouth to speak - what he might have said, he wasn't sure, just something to break the tension of the silence and see if he could get at least _something_ resembling an answer out of her - but quite suddenly, like a bowstring pulled too tight, the great effort in her broke.

Whatever Ven was holding back broke free with great force, a single syllable Martin faintly recognized from a clenched jaw, and it shook the trees around them and knocked Martin to the ground, skidding backwards in the dirt with his ears ringing.

" _Shit._ " Ven's voice was her own again, and she used it immediately to swear, scrambling off the top of the dry bones of the dragon. Though his vision swam, Martin heard her slip and hit the ground unceremoniously, grunting hard with the impact, before staggering to pull herself back to her feet and rush to his side.

Martin groaned, still reeling and disoriented, as he struggled to prop himself up in the dirt; Ven, at his side now, seemed almost hesitant to touch him - not that he could blame her - but she resigned to reaching out cautiously and trying to help him steady himself.

"I- I'm so sorry," she stammered, about at a loss for words as he was. "I tried to hold it in, I- I don't-..."

It was, he realized, the same word - or one of them, anyways - that the final draugr had used back in the barrow to throw him off the platform, and Martin supposed he ought to be thankful that it didn't seem to hit him nearly as hard this time. His bones still ached from that.

"Are you alright?" He asked wearily as soon as he could will the words to form, a hand fumbling for her arm. She looked at him stunned like he'd just struck her across the face.

"Don't _ask_ me that," she hissed breathlessly. " _I'm_ the one who just-"

A sound not unlike thunder shook the ground and cut her off, booming through the valley as she looked wild-eyed and afraid up at the mountains looming above that seemed to be the source. It certainly didn't make the ringing in his ears or the pounding in his head any better, but even through all the deliriousness Martin was certain he heard voices through it all - not thunder, but a single word, momentous and grave. _Dovahkiin._

"Dragonborn," Martin murmured without really thinking about it. Ven snapped her head back to him.

_"What?"_

"I- it means _Dragonborn,_ " he repeated, wheels still turning in his mind. Of course he knew the word, both as a Septim and a scholar, and parts of the legend attached to it, if only a little. But a part of him told him he'd recognize it even if he _didn't_ know all that history. Slowly, and bit by bit, things were starting to click together.

"And- and what the hell does _that_ mean?"

He barely understood it all himself, but there was one thing he was sure of. "Ven, I think they're calling for _you._ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dovahzul translations:
> 
> _Kos mulhaan_ \- "be still"
> 
> _Mal lirre_ \- "little worms"


	8. o sleeper awake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know it's like three whole words but the chapter title comes from (part of) a line in [Caesar](https://youtu.be/3GM8qfd3gy8) by The Oh Hellos.

"Sorry. Delphine's out, so the inn's closed." Orgnar set aside the mug he'd just finished wiping out and grabbed the next. "Bar's still open, though. Delphine's word about keeping you fed is still good, so if you want something just let me know. Can't promise it'll be any good, but it's hot."

Beside Martin, Ven's shoulders sagged visibly. "How long is she going to be gone for?"

Orgnar shrugged, and Martin was fairly certain he didn't really care. "She owns the place, she does what she wants."

"But you _know us,_ " Ven argued. "We're not some random strangers who want a room."

"Delphine does the innkeeping. I don't." He eyed them both, but mostly Ven, dubiously. "I thought you both had places to stay with the blacksmith and the mill. Why don't you go sleep there?"

Martin found that one a little hard to explain without going into detail about what they'd been through in the valley. And Ven had made it pointedly clear she wanted that whole affair kept as private as humanly possible. But they were both aching and exhausted, mentally just as much as physically, and they just wanted a few hours of respite away from the prying eyes of the families who'd taken them in. Martin wasn't even sure how he'd explain his battered and soot-caked appearance to Sigva, looking so much like he had coming out of Helgen.

"We've been through a lot," was all he said, wearily and defeated. "We just need a night to rest where no one's going to ask any questions."

Orgnar raised an eyebrow at them both, eyeing them over skeptically; both of them _did_ look worse for wear, after all, Ven especially, who'd lost the will to keep up the usual hardened mask and looked remarkably vulnerable in the moment. Something about how awful they looked must have gotten to him, because at last, the barkeeper relented, sighing and shaking his head.

"You'll have to run your own bath and clean up after yourselves," he said pointedly. "I don't do that. But you can take the two bedrooms over there." Orgnar jerked his head to their left, and with a profoundly grateful sigh, Ven fumbled for the coin to pay him. Martin counted nearly double the septims two rooms and a bath would usually cost in what she slid him, but if Orgnar noticed he said nothing as he just handed them the keys for the rooms. Probably her way of conveying her thanks, Martin reasoned.

There was enough scale and intact bone for the two of them to haul back to Lucan and turn for quite the profit, on top of what he already owed them for retrieving the claw, and all in all both of their coin purses were much fatter for it. Martin particularly couldn't remember the last time his had been so heavy - priesthood had been a _far_ more humble life, as had growing up on a farm before that, and while the inbetween period had been far more lucrative he very pointedly avoided thinking long enough about _that_ to be able to compare it to now. But having all that coin was definitely preferable to the last few days he'd spent with nothing at all.

The inn's only large wooden tub was in the cellar, sectioned off with a screen and next to a hearth that flooded the cold basement with warmth once they could get it burning. It took a bit more work after that to haul from the river and boil enough water over it to fill the tub, made all the harder by the screaming protest of their battered and bruised bodies, but by the time they had it was worth it. When Martin suggested Ven go first, she didn't protest.

Orgnar brought food down as Martin sat at the small table by the fire carefully mending his thoroughly battered robes; the barkeeper had meant what he said about it being _hot_ and not _good_ but at that point, Martin couldn't bring himself to care and he suspected Ven wouldn't either.

Silence settled in between them, even long after Martin had practically inhaled his dinner, when he'd gone back to his sewing and Ven still worked away the monumental amount of soot and dirt caked on with sweat and blood. He decided he'd keep his mouth shut for now about leaving him some of the hot water, but there was a proverbial mammoth in the room he was finding it difficult to ignore.

"So what are you planning to do now?" He asked finally, tone as light and conversational as he could keep it. It took her a long moment to answer, and he almost asked if she'd heard him before she finally spoke.

"I'm going to Riften," she replied stubbornly, almost with a note of warning to her voice. "You're still welcome to come that far with me, like we agreed."

Martin frowned, considering how far he wanted to push it. "And what about what happened in the forest?"

"I'm going to Riften," Ven repeated, slow and stern like she was reiterating her point to a child.

"So you intend to ignore this."

"I have a contract I'm stuck in-"

"Just like you intended to ignore the dragon in the first place and leave through the barrow." It came out much harsher and icier than he intended and he realized he was _much_ more bitter about the whole ordeal than he thought.

She didn't answer then, and Martin was met only with resounding silence from behind the screen.

"Why _did_ you stay, Ven?" He asked, voice far gentler this time.

She was quiet again for a long moment more, but finally, she answered, "Because you were right."

Martin's hands stilled. He wasn't sure what to say to that.

When she realized she wasn't going to get a reply out of him, Ven continued. "If we'd just left through the barrow it probably would have taken us all night to get back down and the dragon probably would have set its sights on Riverwood. We weren't exactly far away. And..." She paused for a moment, seemingly looking for the right words, but eventually gave up. "Nevermind."

"And?" Martin prodded gently, hoping he could coax her into finishing her thought. She gave a low sigh of defeat.

"And you'd have been killed if I just left."

He almost wanted to ask her why she even cared, after she'd so pointedly made it known the last few days that she did _not,_ in fact, care about him and would _not_ be sticking her neck out for him, but he bit his tongue; it'd be cruel, he decided, to keep pushing her that far after everything she'd been through.

"Thank you," he replied softly instead.

Silence settled over them again, but even with everything left unresolved that they'd still need to address _eventually,_ Martin didn't feel the need to break that silence this time.

* * *

A sudden flash of sunlight as the curtains to his room were thrown open chased away what restless sleep had managed to find Martin, scattering hazy dreams that were more scraps of memory than anything else to the winds.

"Up and at 'em." Ven's voice cut across the peaceful quietude of morning brightly, deceptively saccharine over a layer of self-satisfied smugness at the way Martin groaned and rolled over groggily in an unsuccessful attempt to shut out the light.

"How did you get in here? I locked my door last night."

She ignored that. "It's about two hours after dawn which means we should already be halfway to Whiterun by now. So we've got a lot of lost time to make up for."

A good night's rest seemed to do her some good, it seemed, and it was a relief to see her back in good spirits - although Martin had to wonder if he might have snuck in a few more hours of sleep if she'd still been moping. Unceremoniously he pulled himself to sit, wiping blearily at his eyes, and he frowned at her standing expectantly at his bedside with her hands on her hips.

"I did bring you the breakfast Orgnar made." She jerked her head towards the table in the corner of the small room. "Should still be hot."

"Is it any good?"

"It's breakfast."

Martin sighed and began pulling himself from beneath the furs of the bed, running a hand through his bedhead. When she made no move to leave him to prepare for the day in peace, he fixed her a weary look.

"Do you mind?"

"Just making sure you're not going to crawl back into bed and go back to sleep as soon as I leave."

Martin groaned. "Ven, _please._ "

She grinned, toothy and sharp, hands thrown up in mock surrender as she backed towards the door. "The sooner we can get back to Farengar, the sooner we can get on the road to Riften, is all I'm saying. It's a very long walk, after all."

He still hadn't quite recovered from the events of the days prior, aching and weary from it all, the fitful night of sleep seeming to do him more harm than good leaving him stiff and sore all over, so the long road ahead of them didn't exactly have him bounding ahead to get to it in a hurry. But there were answers ahead of him on that road, if he was lucky, and things to be done, and little left for him in Riverwood, after all; no use putting the journey off any longer, he reasoned. With a great sigh as Ven closed the door behind her, Martin's weary hands found the old worn robe draped over the back of the table's chair as he began pulling himself together.

* * *

"Time is running out, Farengar, don't forget. This isn't some theoretical question - dragons _have_ come back."

The last thing Martin and Ven expected on their return to Dragonsreach was a familiar voice from Farengar's study; her hands planted on his desk, her leather cowl kept her face entirely from view at that angle, but it hadn't been long enough that either of them had forgotten what Delphine's voice sounded like.

"Yes, yes, don't worry, I'm taking this as seriously as you are," Farengar assured, though his tune certainly didn't match his words. "Although, the chance to see a living dragon up close _would_ be tremendously valuable... Ah, before I forget, let me show you something else I found... very intriguing. I think-"

"You have visitors," Delphine cut in, jerking her head towards the pair hovering unsuredly in the doorway.

"Hmm? Ahh, you're back! Was Bleak Falls Barrow a success? You didn't die, it seems."

"No, it seems not," Ven replied dryly, pulling the Dragonstone from underneath her arm and stepping into the study. Farengar rushed to take it from her enthusiastically.

"Ahh, the Dragonstone! The two of you really are a cut above the rest of the brutes the Jarl usually sends me."

If that was supposed to be a compliment, Farengar had certainly missed his mark with it, Martin mused sourly. The wizard didn't seem to notice, though, as he held the Dragonstone up to inspect it, beaming at it as he returned to his desk. "My... associate here was the one who discovered its location, through means she's yet declined to share with me."

Martin nodded politely at Delphine, who still seemed intent on keeping her face hidden, for all the lack of good that it would do her now.

"I'm surprised to see you here."

"Just a little something I'm working on on the side," she replied curtly, in a tone that said _keep your mouth shut about it._

"Of course."

"You know each other?" Farengar asked curiously, looking up from the Dragonstone and glancing between them as Martin and Ven sidled up to the desk.

"In passing." Delphine pushed off from the desk then, making for the doorway. "Farengar, just send me a copy when you're done deciphering the tablet."

"Oh, you aren't staying? I had a few more things I had been hoping you'd look over..."

"They'll have to wait till next time, I'm afraid." She gave a curt wave, pausing only just before disappearing out of the study altogether. "Nice work getting the tablet out of the barrow, by the way."

Just the three of them now, Martin and Ven exchanged a wordless glance before turning their attention back to Farengar.

"So, we've upheld our end of the bargain," Ven remarked, an unspoken reminder in her voice that it was time for Farengar to uphold his.

"Yes, I've cleared the matter of your payment with the Jarl, his steward Avenicci can arrange to have it brought out right away. A hundred septims a piece sounds fair, doesn't it?"

It was a little short, Martin noted, and judging by the way Ven's expression soured out of the corner of his eye, she thought so, too. But, while Martin had done his best not to walk away with anything from the barrow itself, the dragon and Lucan's errand had heavied their pockets more than enough to make up for anything Farengar might be shorting them.

"I would say so," Martin concurred politely. "Wouldn't you, Ven?"

She hummed resentfully, but relented all the same. "That will do."

"Excellent, excellent." Farengar clasped his hands together. "And if either of you is ever in Whiterun again, do stop by to see me, I'm sure to have more I'll need done once I'm done deciphering the Dragonstone."

"I would be happy to lend a hand again," Martin replied, though Ven said nothing.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I do have quite a bit of work ahead of me with this."

"Actually, I had a question about the barrow, if you didn't mind."

Ven cast Martin a nervous glance, and he did his best to make his own reassuring - there was much about the trip to Bleak Falls, and in fact the trip back from it, that could stand to go unsaid. But with luck there were still answers to be found without giving too much away.

"In the room where we found the Dragonstone, there was a... a wall, for lack of a better word," Martin explained. "Or maybe more like a monument of some kind. Tall and standalone and made out of stone. We thought at first it might be the Dragonstone, till we found this tablet."

"I see. And what was on this monument?"

"Script in the same language as is on the back of the Dragonstone, and a carving of the same symbol on the front - of what must be a dragon's head, I believe? I couldn't tell you what the rest of it was."

Farengar frowned. "I don't imagine you managed to get a copy of the text of some kind."

"We had nothing to produce a rubbing or make a copy with, I'm afraid," Martin replied apologetically.

"Now's probably the best shot you're going to get at getting through that barrow alone, if you want to see it for yourself," Ven pitched in, "now that all the traps have been disarmed and the... _infestations_ cleared out."

"Till the bandits move in," Farengar retorted sourly. "But I may just have to make a point to deliver these notes on the tablet in person as an excuse to try and take a trip up there."

"What I wanted to ask," Martin continued, "was if you knew what exactly the wall _was._ "

Farengar only hummed lowly in response at first, rubbing his chin and furrowing his brow in deep concentration. "There are old monuments much like it that would fit the description scattered around Skyrim," he answered eventually, "but what exactly they _are_ I couldn't say. I know the running theory from other scholars is that many of them might be memorials of a sort, marking burial sites."

"Of the dragons?" Martin asked warily. Farengar quickly shook his head.

"No, no - of important figures and old heroes and the like. I know I've got a book somewhere around here that translates one or two of those engravings you mentioned as old epitaphs. But if that's what _every_ one of those walls is, I couldn't say. Which is why I _really_ wished you'd have gotten me a copy of the script."

"We had a lot on our plate at the moment," Ven replied curtly, barely keeping a sneer off her face and out of her voice.

"Of course," Farengar replied coldly in turn. "I'm sure finding your way back out of the ruin you had already traversed once was a _very_ challenging affair."

Ven bristled sharply beside him, and quickly Martin cut in again before things could get any worse. "Nothing you've read on the walls had anything strange to say about them? No magic that seemed to be attached to them, or odd sounds...?"

"No, nothing of the sort." Farengar narrowed his eyes cagily. "Why, _did_ there seem to be some sort of magic attached to the one you found...?"

Ven and Martin exchanged a nervous glance.

"Not quite," Martin replied carefully. "Just a fair deal of draugr in the barrow, and a particularly... _powerful_ one entombed directly next to the wall."

"Ahh. I have to remember both of you are new to Skyrim. No, the draugr are quite commonplace up here - well, rather, if you stay out of old tombs and caves from now on, I'm sure you'll be fine. Nothing to do with those old walls, as far as anyone knows. Although the one at Bleak Falls Barrow may be a memorial of some kind for the one that was buried next to it... I wonder if I have something around here that mentions who was laid to rest in the barrow." Distractedly, Farengar turned his attention to one of his bookshelves, picking over the tomes like he'd quite suddenly forgotten either of them were there.

"I see. Well if, by chance, you do notice anything odd when you visit, I would love to know the next time I'm in Whiterun," Martin replied.

"Whatever it is you don't want to tell me, that's fine," Farengar replied over his shoulder, "but I can't exactly be of any help if you won't give me the full story."

But Ven beside him shook her head pointedly at Martin, and the priest was inclined to agree - the wall, the dragon, the distant call of bellowing voices, all of it seemed connected somehow, and whatever was going on with the whole _Dragonborn_ thing, it felt like a set of cards that it might be safer to play close to their chests for now.

"Farengar!" Irileth's voice cut out suddenly across the hall, cutting off any more conversation on the matter as the housecarl charged breathlessly into the study. "The two of you have returned as well, thank the Eight - I need you three to come at once, a dragon's been sighted nearby."

Martin looked to Ven immediately, the two of them exchanging a harried glance.

"Of course there has been," Ven sighed, hoisting her bow off her shoulder as she and Martin made to follow after. "Wouldn't be like the Eight to give us a break for one day, now would it?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm aware the Sleeping Giant is described differently/has different features than how the location appears in canon but how about make-believe land has whatever i want


	9. it'll have you in the end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from [don't try](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abWoD5XpqKU) by everything everything (mild body horror tw for some of the art they feature briefly in the video.)

The valley outside Riverwood had provided a certain privacy when they felled their first dragon, and its power - whatever the extent of that may be - left its mortal coil and found Ven's instead. The open fields outside Whiterun, next to the smoldering stone rubble of the watchtower, provided no such luxury - certainly not with an audience of about half the city guard. Every one of them stood staring, shaken to their core, as the burning light died and Ven stood, shoulders squared, somber and triumphant mere paces from the dry bones of the now-dead dragon.

"I... I can't believe it," a guard breathed, leaning heavily on his sword for support as he stared at her like he'd just seen a God. "You're Dragonborn!"

" _No,_ " Ven snapped immediately, bristling and on the defensive. "I'm not _Dragonborn,_ it's just..."

Her floundering for a better excuse gave room for another guard to jump in. "No, you are!" He exclaimed, with a thick Nord accent positively dripping in exultation at what he'd just seen. "Just like in the old tales, back from when there were still dragons in Skyrim - the Dragonborn would slay dragons and steal their power, just like you did!"

"I didn't _steal its power,_ that's not what that _was,_ " Ven insisted, backing away from the encroaching crowd only for the backs of her knees to hit the dragon's skull. "I just-"

"You're the one the Greybeards were calling last night!"

" _No!_ "

She had no excuse to give them that could explain away what they'd all just seen, certainly not when she barely understood it all herself. Martin ducked in quickly from across the small battlefield where he'd been standing when the beast finally fell. It took some maneuvering to push past the guards, squeezing between them, but immediately he was at her side, putting himself between her and the crowd of wide-eyed guards with a hand on her back and doing his best to usher her away from them.

"Thank you all for your help, truly," he called, "but we really must be reporting back to the Jarl now."

But the guards were relentless. "If she's Dragonborn, that means she should be able to Shout. Use the Thu'um without any training, the way the dragons do."

"Like old Tiber Septim himself," one of them marveled, and Martin winced at the mention of the name.

"I've never heard of Tiber Septim killing any dragons."

"There weren't any dragons then, idiot."

"That's enough," Irileth barked, finally stepping in, and a silent rush of relief washed over Martin as she put herself between the two of them and the guard. "Some of you would be better off keeping quiet than flapping your gums on matters you don't know anything about. I see a dead dragon - now we know we can kill them, some mythical Dragonborn or not, and that's enough for me."

"You wouldn't understand, Housecarl," the second guard admonished, "you ain't a Nord."

"I've been all across Tamriel, seen plenty of things just as outlandish as this. I'd advise you all to trust in the strength of your sword over tales and legends."

"If she's really Dragonborn, like out of the old tales, she ought to be able to Shout," one of them repeated adamantly. "Can she? Let her try it, Irileth."

The Housecarl ignored that. "Instead of standing around blathering and looking foolish, how about you begin cleaning this up?" She pointed sharply at the skeleton sprawled across the singed grass, that harsh and authoritative tone leaving no room for the rabble to continue pestering the two of them. Martin looked to Irileth gratefully as she began escorting the two of them back to the city, letting his hand drop from Ven's back.

"That was the hairiest fight I've ever been in, and I've been in more than a few," she remarked as she walked beside them, slinging her fine elven bow back over her shoulder. Copper strands had begun to escape her neatly pulled back hair, and though her grey skin concealed most of it, that weary soot-covered look she sported like the rest of them was starting to become woefully familiar to Martin. "I don't know about this Dragonborn business, but I'm certainly glad the two of you were with us. I fear things might have been far worse without you."

"We couldn't have done it without the guards," Martin replied graciously, although experience had told them that wasn't quite true. Still, the dragon had come crashing to the ground in a fraction of the time it'd taken he and Ven to fell the one in the valley, and with none of the close calls or body blows that still left him aching and weary after the night before, and he was thankful for that. "They're very well trained."

"Commander Caius and I do our best," she humbly returned. "Mostly Caius. They aren't the brightest brutes in Skyrim, but they're dependable." Her tune dropped, though, a genuine gravity and mournfulness taking over her voice. "We lost some good men today."

"If it hadn't been for the guards holding the watchtower, the dragon might have set its sights on Whiterun," he reminded gently, finding that priestly note creeping into his voice that he used so often for the grieving and brokenhearted in Kvatch. "Many more would have died; they saved a lot of lives with their sacrifice. Their families will be proud."

Irileth hummed grimly in agreement. "They might not have been able to hold it at all if the two of you hadn't been there. We owe you much for making sure their sacrifices weren't in vain."

"We're just glad things weren't worse," Ven replied quietly, breaking her self-imposed silence. Her hands were curled into fists at her sides and she seemed still to be composing herself from the shock of it all, a scared and haunted look having crept into her eyes at the sheer weight of the burden put upon her, but she no longer looked like she was willing herself not to turn heel and run away from it all at any moment. "Helgen was a massacre; the last thing we wanted was a repeat of that."

Irileth nodded gravely. "Now that we're aware the dragons are returning, we have the chance to be a little more prepared than they were. Hopefully no one in any of the other holds will be caught off-guard like that again." But that hope quickly left her voice. "Still, Helgen was a well-fortified keep. Whiterun itself might be defensible, but I'm afraid for the people in our smaller settlements. The detachment we sent to Riverwood may not be enough to hold off a slaughter if a dragon chooses to attack, to say nothing for Rorikstead or one of the farms."

The reminder of the imminent danger that Riverwood sat precariously on the edge of made Martin's stomach twist with dread. He'd seen firsthand how vulnerable the town really was, scant in the way of walls or watchtowers to make it anything resembling defensible against something like a dragon attack - even without the Jarl's detachment of guards, something like a party of bandits or even a handful of the beasts from the mountains would be foolish to try and go after the town, but an entire _dragon?_ There were so many kind faces he remembered, people who gave so much in such a short time, not to mention _Sigva,_ whom he genuinely felt he owed his life. How little hope there was for any of them if a dragon set its sights on Riverwood turned his gut.

Desperately he scrambled to string together something resembling hope to cling to in the bleak face of it all. "The dragon that attacked Helgen was much larger than the other ones we've seen," he reasoned aloud. "As long as the beast from Helgen was an outlier, the smaller settlements might actually stand a chance against the other dragons."

Irileth raised an eyebrow at him. " _Ones?_ Plural?"

He hadn't meant to say that. Martin blanched and Ven shot him a startled look as they both realized what he'd given away with just one word.

"How many more have you seen?" Irileth pressed, and Ven gave him a hard warning glare, but Martin sighed. There was probably no talking his way out of this one, and Irileth wasn't entirely a stranger or even some common rabble - she wasn't going to reveal what happened in the valley to just anyone, and more than that, she needed to know the _whole_ truth if she was going to protect the people of Whiterun.

"Just one more, other than the one at the watchtower," Martin explained, turning his gaze to the road ahead of them to keep his eyes off the way Ven angrily worked her jaw. "Last night, in the valley outside Riverwood. It's not going to be a threat anymore, however. We took care of it."

"It's the first I've heard of it - who were you with, the Riverwood guard?"

Martin shook his head. "Just us."

He turned back in time to see her eyes widen incredulously. " _By yourselves?_ And you're certain it's really dead?"

He nodded gravely. "Very."

"By the Gods..." With a shaken hand Irileth pushed her mussed hair back into place, thoroughly shellshocked as she processed the revelation, and then quite suddenly, she began to laugh. "You really didn't need us out there at all, did you? _We_ were the ones who'd have been doomed without you."

Martin grimaced, and shook his head. "It was a very close fight. We only managed by using the terrain to our advantage, and because of a few strokes of luck. On an open field like this, it would have demolished us, watchtower or no. In fact, you saw us out there - I'm a mage, not built for combat with a _dragon_ of all things, I wouldn't have made it at all last night if not for Ven."

His companion shot him a brief glance with an expression he couldn't quite read.

"You are quite the deadeye," Irileth concurred, looking at Ven with genuine approval in her eyes. The archer gave a dry smile, shrugging nonchalantly, but all humility was clearly feigned.

"It's a gift," was all she said.

* * *

The steps up to Dragonsreach seemed somehow monumentally taller than they had just that afternoon, each flight taking what felt like a small eternity to mount, and Martin wasn't sure if it was the exhaustion of the battle or the impendence of what lay at the top behind those great doors and what they might be forced to reveal to the whole court. The only small comfort was Irileth still at their side, flanking them every step of the way to the Jarl.

The Imperial steward spotted the three of them as they crossed the looming hall, springing up from his seat at the Jarl's long table immediately. "Good, you're finally here," he exclaimed, palpable relief in his voice. "The Jarl's been waiting for you." The man moved to escort them the rest of the short way to the throne, but Irileth wordlessly dismissed him with a single gesture - he nodded, almost meekly, and found a place instead trailing behind.

"So? What happened at the watchtower?" Balgruuf asked as they approached, mounting the short few steps up to his throne. "Was the dragon there?"

"It was, my lord," Irileth announced. "The watchtower was destroyed by the time we got there - we'll need to arrange to have it rebuilt immediately, with everything going on. But the dragon has been dealt with."

"Dead?" The Jarl asked, a glint in his eye and a grim eagerness in his voice.

The housecarl smiled almost darkly. "Very, my lord."

"I knew I could count on you, Irileth," Balgruuf exulted, great admiration in his voice and his eyes for her. But his gaze flickered to the others and the gravity on their countenances, and he faltered. "But there must be more to it than that."

The three of them exchanged glances, Martin noting the warning look Ven shot Irileth was the same one she always sent him when he was about to say something she didn't want him to. But the housecarl's gaze was deeply apologetic for what she was about to do before she turned back to the Jarl.

"When the dragon died, some sort of light left its body and entered Ven," Irileth reported dutifully, gesturing to the Redguard beside her. "The men were very insistent that she was something called 'Dragonborn,' but you know how they are."

Ven released a sharp breath, pained, like the revelation to all who could hear it was some sort of a great blow to her. In his throne Balgruuf straightened, eyes brightening at her.

"By Ysmir's beard." His gaze flickered questioningly back to Irileth. "Is she? Dragonborn, I mean?"

"To speak anything more to it would only be irresponsible speculation, my lord. I know only what I saw, and that's that the dragons can be killed."

"But you did see it with your own eyes? The power she absorbed?"

Irileth sighed reluctantly. "Yes, my lord."

"Then it must have been you," Balgruuf concurred, looking back to Ven. "The one the Greybeards were summoning last night."

" _That_ was why you were asking all those questions about the monument," Farengar, who had until then been listening intently from the sidelines, realized aloud. "You were in the barrow about the same time the Greybeards spoke, weren't you? It must have awakened something in you that the Greybeards could sense - _fascinating._ Let me get my notes, you have to tell me everything."

Ven was getting that skittish look again, like she was going to turn tail and run straight out of the hall at any moment, and unconsciously she began to take a step back, shaking her head. "The Dragonborn is an old _Nordic_ legend," she insisted, "I really don't think it has anything to do with me. There's got to be some other sort of explanation here."

But the Jarl countered, "There's nothing in the legends saying that a Dragonborn has to be a Nord. Between this and what happened at the watchtower and this whole return of dragons at hand, this has to be more than mere coincidence and misunderstanding."

As she realized there was no talking her way out of this, Ven set her jaw and stood her ground instead. "Fine," she relented coldly, "let's say I really am Dragonborn, and I'm the one the Greybeards were calling after all. What then?"

"Then you would answer them," Balgruuf replied, matter-of-factly, like it was the only answer in the world. "There's no refusing the summons of the Greybeards, it's a tremendous honor. They live in seclusion high on the slopes of the Throat of the World, at the top of the Seven Thousand Steps - you're going to have to go to them."

"And what if I didn't?"

Balgruuf looked almost startled for a fraction of a second, but descended quickly into laughter. The man beside him that Martin recognized to be his brother Hrongar, however, was much less amused by her reply, scowling angrily like he'd taken her words as a great disrespect.

"I suppose you could do that," the Jarl replied lightly, in a tone almost humoring, and Ven's jaw worked angrily. "But something tells me you'll find your way up there eventually. Destiny has a way of getting what it wants out of people, and if it's your destiny to be Dragonborn, well..." He petered off, but she took the hint all the same.

"We still haven't discussed the subject of our reward," Ven said flatly, pointedly shifting the conversation to a subject she was much more comfortable with.

"Of course - you have done Whiterun a great service, there's no question about that," Balgruuf agreed. "It was a mighty deed. I would _like_ to offer you a place of honor among the heroes of Whiterun with a title in my court, but..." He eyed her knowingly. "Something tells me you wouldn't quite appreciate that."

"You would be right about that," she replied coldly. Balgruuf laughed again, and Martin decided it was probably a good thing the Jarl seemed to be so well-humored. He was sure there were many other Jarls that would take her attitude as a tremendous insult.

Balgruuf's gaze flickered to the priest then, looking him over curiously, a question in his eyes. "And what about you? You've been very quiet," the jarl observed. "I would be just as honored to extend the offer of Thaneship to the Dragonborn's noble companion, you know."

"Oh, I-" Martin startled, suddenly intensely uncomfortable under the scrutinizing gaze, and he looked away quickly. "I'm very honored, my lord, but I... don't believe nobility would suit me very much."

"You have a very noble bearing," Balgruuf countered almost casually, still inspecting the man. "You could even pass for a Septim under all that soot and grime. But, it's just as well," he sighed, finally tearing his gaze away, and Martin hoped his shoulders didn't sag too visibly with relief. "A monetary reward will do. And I open my palace and home to you for the night - there's no reason the Dragonborn should have to stay the night in the Bannered Mare, as fine of an establishment as it is."

Beside Martin, Ven barely choked back a small laugh at that last remark, caught in the back of her throat and covered up with a conspicuous little cough.

* * *

Hesitant as they were at first to accept the Jarl's hospitality, neither of them particularly accustomed to _or_ comfortable in such noble accommodations, as soon as the word _bath_ was mentioned all reservations went straight out the window.

It took time for the servants to prepare the private chambers being offered to the two of them, and in the meantime Martin and Ven waited in the hallways of the living quarters, deeply uncomfortable and looking profoundly out of place in their soot-caked hand-me-down travelling garbs. There was an uncomfortable hint of familiarity for Martin in having other people insist on doing everything for him - for months it had been that way at Cloud Ruler where he'd been thrust uneasily into his new role as royalty rather unceremoniously, leaving him wondering if he'd ever get used to it at all and dreading how much worse it would get when he finally had to take the throne. He'd honestly almost _liked_ doing everything himself the night before in Riverwood, despite his exhausted and aching bones, and had rather enjoyed helping Radri and Sigva around the house despite his circumstances in Helgen; there was a sort of simplicity in it that he understood, and a sense of normalcy he'd been craving ever since that first gate opened up in Kvatch, harkening back to his old roots as a priest and a farmer's son. And yet here he was again, being doted on by strangers and not having the faintest idea what to do with himself.

Irileth found them while they waited, still clad in her armor and worse for wear, and she somehow made everything just a little bit better just by being there with them and looking about as bad as they did.

"I wanted to apologize," she said matter-of-factly to Ven, wasting no time with getting to her point. "I know you wanted to keep what happened out there with the... _whatever it was_ as discreet as possible. But I am sworn with a solemn duty to my lord and I would not lie to him."

Ven sighed angrily, fixing a furious gaze dead ahead as she worked her jaw. "Half the damn city guard saw it happen," she lamented, deep in resignation. "Word's going to get around one way or another. It's probably better he hear it from you than some jibbering idiot who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground."

Irileth nodded gravely. "I am sorry it had to be such a public affair. This is a heavy enough burden to be thrust upon your shoulders without every Nord in a quarter-mile radius reveling about it."

Ven laughed ruefully. "At least my anonymity was nice while it lasted."

The servants called for them then, and Irileth respectfully parted ways with them as Martin and Ven were ushered into their chambers. They took his travelling clothes from where he was asked to leave them after he stepped behind the screen - he wasn't sure how he felt about that, _or_ about the fine raiments wildly outside his personal tastes that they left for him to wear during his stay at the Jarl's palace, but the robes had been in desperate need of a good wash even well before the second dragon and ultimately he relented - and then the servant left him to his devices, alone in the profound quiet of the guest room.

The hot bath, smelling sweetly of the same lavender that dappling the fields of Whiterun, really drove the point home of how truly _exhausted_ he was - between the leftover weariness of the Barrow and the first dragon the night before, and all the new aches and pains settling in from taking a second head-on so soon, the way the water seemed to wash it all away, even if only temporary, nearly put him to sleep right there in the tub. He took his time, alternating between scrubbing away soot and dust and using Restoration to soothe the more pervasive bruises and aches. If this was going to become a regular occurrence, fighting dragons and roughing it through dusty old tombs - and something about the strange new situation he'd found himself in told him that it was, in fact, going to become his new normal - then he was sure he could get used to it, eventually. With luck, maybe soon enough he'd barely even notice the aching at the end of the day. He just had to actually _survive_ that long, Martin lamented, and that was the part he wasn't so sure about.

But at the same time, a part of him couldn't help but relish in the newfound freedom. It was at a hell of a cost, to be sure - he had nothing and no one but the vagabond he couldn't be sure even actually _liked_ him that fate had felt fit to cross his path with, everything he'd known and loved two hundred years in the past and the world he'd been thrust into seeming to be falling apart at every corner. And it would be a long while yet before he stopped aching about it all, he was sure. But it was a second chance he never could have expected - wondered, sometimes, if he even deserved - and after months being hailed as the last Septim, doted on and reminded at every turn that the rest of his life did not belong to him, there was something sweet about just being _Martin_ again, for all that it cost. It wasn't perfect, and most of the time he struggled to see even _that_ silver lining in it all, but it was something where he might not otherwise have anything at all.

He still wasn't sure about the stiff neck and tight cuffs of the fine blue jacket they'd selected for him, but by the time Martin had finished cleaning up and putting himself together, at least he _looked_ like he belonged in a Jarl's palace. Though he found himself idling unsuredly in the hall of the living quarters, it wasn't long before Ven emerged, the dark grey gown they'd picked for her simple yet remarkably elegant on her.

"You look very nice," Martin greeted politely.

"It's been a while since I last mixed with nobles; can't even remember last time I wore something like this," she admitted, eyes fixed on the way the long skirt and flowing sleeves moved like she was still trying to decide how she felt about the thing. The moment passed when she turned to give him a good once-over. "The blue suits you," she remarked almost admiringly. "Balgruuf was right, you do look a bit like a Septim when you're not looking like you just crawled your way out of an Oblivion gate."

He tried not to flinch too visibly.

Dinner was already well underway by the time they made it back out to the main hall, rich smells of honey-sweet meats and fresh bread and half a dozen other full-flavored dishes thrown into the mix hitting so hard it almost made Martin dizzy with the sudden realization of how hungry he actually _was_ after that impossibly long day. Their late arrival was hardly minded - the Jarl and his court welcomed them into the fold graciously, food and drink passed their way and raucous conversation flowing on uninterrupted like the White River itself.

"We were just talking about what transpired this afternoon," Balgruuf informed, taking a long drink from his tankard. "Irileth says you're quite the archer."

The corners of Ven's mouth twitched up. "I have a good eye," she replied with that same faux modesty as before.

"Did you really take down a dragon all by yourself?" It was one of the Jarl's sons that butt his way into the conversation, bright-eyed and leaning forward eagerly - he was a bit older than the other two, but still wick and naive, years off from becoming a man yet.

"The city guard was with us," Martin corrected politely, but the boy shook his head.

"No, last night, outside Riverwood! How big was it?"

Ven glared daggers at Irileth, and even Martin frowned her way as she turned to them both apologetically.

"Reports had come in that it was seen in the area yesterday," she explained. "I had to make sure it was known that it wasn't an issue anymore."

"Was it the same one from Helgen?" The boy asked, ignoring whatever exchange had just taken place as he continued to press for answers. "How do you know it's really dead, if all the dragons are coming back from the dead now?"

"Frothar, please, that's enough," Balgruuf admonished, but Ven shook her head and put up her hand in a wordless gesture that it was alright.

"It wasn't the same one from Helgen, no," she answered patiently. "It was a lot smaller than that. But it's really dead, I promise."

She seemed a little uneasy about going into it in front of all the nobles of the court she'd been trying so desperately to get _some_ modicum of privacy from, but there was an unexpected warmness in her for the child and Frothar's eagerness spurred her on. The tale she launched into was a little embellished, Martin decided, but it had the Jarl's son hanging onto every word in complete captivation, the very stars in his eyes.

"I hope the dragons are still around by the time I'm old enough to go fight them," he declared, startling enthusiasm for the whole grim affair in all his young naivety. "Father says I'm still too young to train with a sword but I want to go to battle and become a hero like you are. I could be the greatest dragonslayer in all of Skyrim!"

Balgruuf sighed deeply and touched his brow, even as he laughed in defeat at his son's childish valiance.

" _Hero_ is a strong word for it," Ven replied grimly, barely concealing her dissatisfied frown.

"Nonsense," Hrongar argued, almost with a note of insult to his voice. "You've saved Whiterun and her people today, both of you, what other word is there for that but heroic?"

She seemed to know better than to try to argue with him, so Ven turned back to her meal with a look of profound discomfort on her face.

The conversation carried ever onward without either of them, but would not seem to leave the subject of _dragons_ and _heroes_ and every mention of the word Dragonborn seemed to make Ven flinch; Martin watched the pressure build and build till finally she snapped like a taut bowstring, standing abruptly at the earliest possible opportunity and excusing herself for the night. The Jarl's court scarcely batted an eye, the drinking and rollicking banter entirely uninhibited by the absence. Half out of a desire not to be left alone and singularly out of place among nobles and stewards, and half out of genuine concern, Martin hurriedly finished the last of the night's final course before dismissing himself as well.

* * *

The palace's hallways were remarkably quiet compared to the noisy dining hall, the tall stone walls only serving to make Martin feel small as he passed only the occasional posted guard. Ven's door, directly next to his own, was shut tight.

The first knock was met with an almost oppressive silence. When no answer came - not so much as an indication that she'd even heard him, really - Martin tried again. "Ven? It's me," he called, not much hope it would get her attention.

But, only a moment later and he could hear the sturdy lock on the other side being unlatched before the door swung open, Ven nodding wordlessly for him to come in. She'd already found her way out of the fine gown and into a very plain linen shirt and trousers that she must have found buried somewhere in one of the wardrobes, much less befitting of a Jarl's honored guest but seemingly worlds more comfortable to her. As soon as she'd closed and latched the door behind him, she found a half-empty goblet she'd abandoned on one of the room's tables, quickly drained it, and immediately began filling it again from a remarkably expensive-looking bottle of wine. Ven glanced at Martin, raising the bottle to him in silent question.

He shook his head. "I don't drink," he declined politely.

"And is that a priest thing, or a personal choice?"

"A bit of both, I suppose."

She shrugged and took a long drink.

"I wanted to make sure you were alright," he said finally, after a long silence between them. Ven scoffed.

"And what do you think, genius?" Dropping unceremoniously onto the edge of the bed, her whole frame sagged, such a profound weariness visible across every inch of her, and Martin realized exactly how hard she'd been fighting to keep herself together and look composed and dignified back in the dining hall. Gingerly, he crossed the room to sit beside her.

"I think I regret leaving Hammerfell about ten times a day," she lamented, heaving out a great sigh. "None of this ever would have happened if I'd just stayed put instead of insisting on wandering aimlessly like an idiot."

While that may have been true, Martin wasn't sure that would have even been possible - something about what the Jarl said about destiny getting what it wants had stuck with him, and he genuinely had to wonder if there was a force on Tamriel that could have stopped her from finding her way up to Skyrim _eventually_.

But that _wasn't_ what she needed to hear right then. "I know it's a heavy burden," he replied, putting on the most comforting tone he could and hoping it wasn't _too_ obvious he was speaking from experience. "But it won't feel that way forever - and you don't have to carry it alone. We'll figure this out." As far as he was aware, the plan on the table was still to part ways after they reached Riften - but it was a plan that was made when they couldn't have possibly known that this would be how things would go, and he hoped that unspoken offer in his words to stay with her wasn't entirely unwelcome.

"I didn't _ask_ for this burden," she insisted almost indignantly, slumping forward with her elbows on her knees, head in one hand and the goblet still clutched white-knuckled in the other. Martin gently placed his hand on her back in comfort. "I didn't- I'm not a _hero_ , Martin, I'm a th- I just-" She stumbled over her words, catching her wine-drunk mouth before it could run too far ahead of her, but there was no hiding that she'd been very nearly about to say _thief._ "I'm someone who decided a very long time ago that I didn't owe the world anything because it wasn't going to give _me_ anything if I didn't take it my damn self - I wouldn't know _how_ to be a hero, and now all of Skyrim's going to expect me to- to _save the world,_ or something."

Martin sighed, sliding his hand to wrap his arm around her, thumb rubbing idly at her shoulder. "You aren't a bad person, Ven," he said softly. "I know that you keep trying to tell me you are, and maybe you try to tell yourself that, but I don't believe it."

"You wouldn't _know,_ " she argued.

"I know that you wouldn't have come back in the valley if you were. You don't have to be a saint to do the right thing."

"You can't-" She groaned, squeezing her eyes shut in frustration. "You don't know what it's _like_ to have this kind of burden shoved onto you. You can talk about _figuring it out_ and _doing the right thing_ all you want but that's easy for _you_ to say when you aren't the one being told you're some sort of legendary dragonslayer, and now dragons are coming back and you're being summoned by some ancient order of monks and you don't even know what's going _on_ but everyone keeps talking about you like you're- fuckin' _Tiber Septim Himself_ reborn or something."

The fact of the matter was, Martin _did_ know what it was like - maybe the situation wasn't precisely the same, but the weight of that burden was something he in fact was, unfortunately, intimately familiar with. And the more complicated Ven's situation got, the more he was beginning to realize that the truth of it all was going to have to come out sooner rather than later. If he wasn't almost certain it would just make everything worse, he would tell her right then and there; it wouldn't be that night, but it couldn't wait much longer, either, and somewhere in the back of his mind he was already beginning to prepare himself for it.

"You're right, I can't know," he lied instead, gently reaching out to place his other hand on her knee. "But I know even Tiber Septim wasn't born a hero - the Greybeards had to call him once, too, and while I'm not saying you have to strive to live up to _that_ legacy, I think you're capable of more than you know. And I mean it when I say you don't have to do this alone."

She was quiet for a long moment, rubbing her eye with the hand that had been propping up her head, still pointedly staring at the floor and not at him as he sat patiently and gave her all the time she needed.

"Martin, I'm..." But Ven's words died off, never finished, lost to the silence again as she just shook her head. Instead, she eventually dropped her hand, taking his without a word and letting the silence stretch out between them, nothing left in either of them to say.

When she did finally pull away, taking her hand back and rubbing blearily at her eye again, she shrugged out from underneath his touch and polished off the rest of the goblet in one long drink.

"I'm going to finish off this bottle and get some rest," she said finally, a dour note of finality to her voice as she stood and headed back to the table. "I need to be alone for a while."

"Of course," Martin replied softly. He stood too, showing himself to the door as she busied herself with the bottle again, but paused as he touched the handle and turned over his shoulder to add, "I'm right next door if you need me."

When she said nothing, he slipped quietly out and closed the door behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **UPDATE (8/6):** apologies for getting this up a day late. i'm still just stuck on this one damn part and could not for the life of me get chapter 10 finished even with the break i took during july's nano. i'm going to have to break from the wednesday publishing schedule for now at least till i can work out this snag, possibly with sporadic updates for a few more chapters till i can get my momentum going and get ahead again. i _think_ i've got it at this point, i just don't want to set a deadline for myself and won't make any promises about how much longer it's going to take.
> 
> since ao3 is not really the best platform for getting these kinds of updates out and my tesblr is too active with general content to really be an effective platform either, i've set up an updates-only twitter at [@assd_updates](https://twitter.com/assd_updates). i'll be posting minimally there - literally just whatever's going on with the publishing schedule and when things can be expected whenever i can speak to that - so that people can turn on post notifcations if they want. idk if there's any interest in something similar for any other platforms but let me know i guess??
> 
> anyways. thanks all for reading, i appreciate you <3


End file.
